In a book called High Fidelity, Nick Hornby's character asks himself whether he listens to sad music because he is miserable, or if he is miserable because he listens to sad music. I have that feeling often.As I was growing up, I listened to all kinds of angst-ridden songs. Pink Floyd's The Wall has few laughs in it, and when I was 14 & 15 I lapped up the disillusionment that drips out of that album. Yet it was perhaps one of the happiest times of my life! There was no personal frame of reference for enjoying the misery of the sound and lyrics. But it caught hold of me somewhere deep.
Nostalgic music grips me too, something my hero Tom Robinson is a master at. In War Baby, which I first heard when I was 16, he sang these lines; "Smooth skin and tenderness long ago on a dark night, wish I could see you once again to remember that it was true. I want to be still beside you, quiet and still beside you, listening to your breathing and feeling your warmth again." As time has gone by those words have become my favourite lyrics ever because they now resonate with some events in my own life. Yet at the age when the song first hooked me, I had no experience that linked to these beautiful images. Did those lyrics shape my experience in the future to link with the emotions in the words?
Currently I have a song by Snow Patrol in my head, which has the line "Something was bound to go right sometime today". I can't quite work out whether it is positive or negative - it could be taken as "so many things have gone wrong, something had to go right". Or it could be very positive, "I knew today was going to be good, things were sure to go right". So I guess it is possible to steer the way the song makes you feel depending on how your mindset is.
What I do know is that every now and again, a phrase jumps out at me from a song and stays with me forever. And let's face it, the lines that stick are not normally the happy ones. I conclude that music has certainly shaped parts of my life. These are a few of them.
"Everybody is just a stranger but that's the danger in going my own way". John Mayer, Why Georgia
"If you're looking for somebody you're going to need some help. You know you'll never find her if you're still looking for yourself". Fish, Zoe 25
"Don't be reckless with other people's hearts, and don't put up with people who are reckless with yours". Baz Luhrman, Sunscreen
"Only a dark cocoon before I get my gorgeous wings and fly away". Joni Mitchell - The Last Time I saw Richard. (more on this in the next posting on Sunday.)
"The Stranger we all knew so well, the friend we never will". Tom Robinson, Connecticut.
