Sounds in a Certain Order

January 22, 2007 3:14pm

Music is dangerously powerful in its ability to make schizophrenia a temporary reality in anyone’s mind. Sad songs only bring down happy people, right? So why are they so much more often the flavor of music. I can only imagine it’s because people are sad and like to have their emotions pushed to the edge of devastation.

For a person, depressed or just lonely or unfulfilled perhaps, to listen to a tragic rendition of a tune that so closely resembles their life situation and therefore sets to mood and music the utter urgent crushing nature of it all seems like self-torture.

So why do we do it?

Up Next: Poetry on Blogs is like Boredom on the Face of an Astronaut

Discussion

chad 21 Mar 2007

misery loves company

and first off, how did i ever miss this one.

anyway, i’ve never been brought done by music – at least that i can tell. i guess if you can’t tell that your mood is affected then your mood isn’t affected, unless of course if you’re just really good at avoiding and ignoring your emotions. i can never tell if i’m just fine or if i’m suffering from the unbearable lightness of being (if you’re familiar with the book). i wonder if i’m just floating along so lightly that i try to pick out ways i’m suffering and then trick my mind into phantom torture.

but anyway, the other way i think about sad songs is that they’re best listened to when happy, eagerly, like listening to a ghost story around the fire. if you were really scared you wouldn’t be subjecting yourself to a ghost story.

i long for tragedy. it’s my favorite thing to lust about; i think because i’m not prone to it happening to me. the tragic heroes are so much more appealing to me than the heroes of comedies – in the classical sense. are there even heroes in comedies? like when people live happily ever after? the maiden and the man aren’t the heroes as much as ‘life’ is the hero.

this gets me thinking about an idea of being human. does it show more humanity in a person to defy nature and structure one’s self in an idealized image? it seems like it’s human to go against nature. or maybe that’s just called evolution or leads to evolution which indeed is nature.

but anyway, it called into question, for me, last night, whether or not i would be more human or beast if i was to try to listen to my body in all instances. beast, most would say. so it’s a weird idea that starts to come up now when i stretch and even sit and play piano. when is it right to go with your urges and when is it right to go against them and is one always right and one always wrong?

hmm

i’ve started three different paragraphs and each has been deleted subsequently. i’m either more confused all the sudden or distracted that it’s time for me to go home with some white wine

Reply
nathan 22 Mar 2007

I prefer red, but…

Going against urges or sticking with them. I like that idea. The detective who “always goes with his gut” probably ends up shooting alot of innocent people as much as he randomly picks the bad guy from a crowd of thug-looking types.

But second-guessing yourself, well there’s no time for that in every day life either…once or twice now and then maybe or not.

I think I used to live by a very Shawn-influenced perception that there is no right or wrong, only differences in opinions, so to actually have an opinion of your own is almost moot… but that only leads to a life of being lonely and disillusioned with the world, as it goes on making choices and you’re just left to watch the choices go by and wonder when they’ll start being made in your favor.

But I disagree about the music and ghost stories…I personally listen to sad music to help me relate to the sadness I’m feeling and therefore overcome it, perhaps? And ghost stories, well I like to be frightened…like if I would have been watching that show we watched together the other week, but alone, well I would have been hurriedly reaching for light switches on my way into the bathroom.

But playing piano and stretching and contemplating molecules? You sound like a regular boddhisatva my friend. Let’s go hiking.

Reply
chad 22 Mar 2007

i think all i’m thinking is that i have a really hard time figuring out how i feel.

if i had to state how i think i feel, i’d say, very happy.

i was going to say extremely happy, but i’ll save that for april 22nd.

Reply