Not usually too into country type stuff, but I’ve been playing a bit of guitar myself again recently and this one struck me. Struck a chord, you could say. Actually I’ve been gaining a new appreciation for country/blues stuff in general recently. Just a matter of separating the good from the overly generic.
Something Salt said recently reminded me that I rarely actually post on here, just comment for the most part. So I decided to put some music on and type out a post. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about…well, the general insanity of the world, particularly the blended up mix of good and bad that make this world what it is. It’s as if someone was given the concepts of heaven and hell and then tasked with creating a world that merged the two together. Our world.
These are the types of things you think about when…
…all you want to do is sit around and/or listen to music, in contemplation of the strange world around you. When everything you see, you twist and turn it in your mind until it somehow becomes something… melancholy. Everywhere you go you observe the people, wondering about their lives. You listen to the busy sounds of life, that symphony of happiness and sadness that plays around you, constantly. At a restaurant, you see the happy couple with the baby. You see the old man sitting alone. You see the fat redneck people who somehow seem so content with themselves. You see the tired, depressed-looking young waitress. Then you look back down at your food and meditate on what you’ve seen, listening to whatever sad song they happened to put on in the place.
When you feel like there might be no long-term point to anything you do. You drive through the city at night, looking at the lights, watching the other people drive by. Each of them with their own reasons for being behind that wheel. The busy people, with no cares or thoughts for you, just like you have none for them. The dark figure of the person in the car, it’s fitting really. You can’t tell much more about their appearance than you can about their lives. You drive by them, one by one, and then they disappear forever, back into their own little worlds. Then you get home, put on the same old music and look around. The mess, the empty bottles of vodka. You consider these things, not with regret but with… recognition. And some longing, in the latter case.
When you’re always telling yourself that tomorrow is going to be the day you get your shit together and start doing everything you can to work towards a better future. When the small comforts are just…not quite comforting enough. When you get to the point where all you want to do is pace around, thinking, repeating the same old songs, because you don’t want to go back out into that tuneless, dry reality. But, at the same time, you know that’s no way to live.
5 comments
Riv, wow man. You don’t post much, but when you do it’s a masterpiece. You really put the world in perspective. The good, the bad, and the maddening tangle that we live in. As a dead poet said 1000 years ago: “I myself am heaven and hell”. And that’s what makes life infinitely wonderful and abysmally tragic.
I feel like all the answers on how to survive are in what you wrote. “Repeating the same old songs… that’s no way to live.” But the comfort is so tempting, isn’t it? Or rather the *fear* of leaving that comfort is so overwhelming. So we repeat the same old songs, fall into routines, even if those routines involve suffering & dying, because the alternative — trying to make sense of this mess of reality — will stretch our peanut brains to the breaking point.
Whatever, though. I say if my peanut breaks, so be it. This post has inspired me to bust out of my mechanical joke of a life. I don’t know yet what I’m going to do, but it’s going to be different. Maybe I’ll start by listening to country music 😉 And btw I’m still wondering how your guitar sounds (hint: let’s hear ya)
Thanks, salt. Ah, I’ve never tried to fool myself into thinking there was a possibility of making sense of reality. I’m just along for the ride, trying to make the best of it that I can. And honestly, I’m perfectly content with that. It is what it is, and either way there’s always a choice.
Hah, I’m not necessarily opposed to the idea of posting something involving my shoddy guitar work, but if I did, I don’t think it would be anytime soon. Still, I’ve had the idea for a song in my head for the longest time, and if I ever get around to actually writing it, it’ll be on here, I’m sure. Especially since the subject matter would fit well with this site.
Sometimes the sound of silence is the perfect soundtrack. Like that moment when you first start to wake up, and you’re caught between waking reality and sleep. The dawn of consciousness. No thoughts, no physical sensations, nothing but silent bliss. Tranquility achieved through the absence of external stimuli.
Idk. I kinda dig it.
Hey man, burn me a copy of that soundtrack. When I wake up each morning, all I get is the soundtrack to Apocalypse Now.
I kinda dig it too, although just how long I’d want to stay in that state is another issue. Hmm. Maybe I should have prefaced this post with Simon and Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence. Although that song will always be about a nuclear explosion for me ever since I saw a particular fan-made music video.