Posted on by crystal · 8 Comments

♫ Hide behind your walls… ♫

Every once in a while, I bump into a song that touches me deeply. I often make it my new ringtone, or play it non-stop for days. The songs range from heartbroken lamentations to odes of angst, and they move me for different reasons. This morning while walking to work, I bumped into this song, and it’s been on replay ever since.

♫ A crowded street can be a quiet place when you’re walking alone. ♫

I don’t know why it struck me with such force. Maybe it’s because I’m at a place where everything is right, yet everything feels wrong. I have an awesome new job that I love. My baby is thriving as a girl scout. I have a chance with a boy that I adore. I’ve found a path that suits me beautifully. Yet I’m still moping around, and I can’t think why.

3 Doors Down has always been one of my favourite bands. I don’t know the members’ names, their story, or even their greatest hits. I just know I like a lot of their songs. This one speaks to me because I’m that exact moment, the moment where I’m afraid to try things because I don’t want to fail. But like the man says:

♫ If you’re afraid to fly, then I guess you never will. ♫

Yesterday, I directed my first ever radio commercial. Most fun I’ve had in ages! Then I did something called an aura photograph, which told me my aura was orange. Apparently, people with orange auras are ‘creative, productive, adventurous, courageous, and relate to emotions.’ The photo came with a 23-page analysis, which veered between being uncannily accurate and immensely amusing.

I don’t consider myself adventurous. I describe myself as conservative and introverted. When I said this to the people in the photography room, they burst out laughing. Apparently, you don’t get to call yourself reserved when you have tattoos and purple hair. *shrug* Anyway, that’s the frame of mind I was in when I found my OCD song for today.

♫ Your mistakes do not define you now, they tell you who you’re not. ♫

My new boss gave us an assignment last week. He asked to find the answers to three questions – our passion, what things [the company can do to] make us happy, and what [skills] we bring to the table. The task was easy for me, because all three questions are answered everyday, in my mind, and on my blog.

One thing I’ve learned – and not for the first time  – is that sometimes, having everything you want doesn’t make you happy. Sometimes, simply being happy makes you happy. I don’t quite know how to do that yet, but I’m working on it. I’m definitely working on it.

♫ It’s the only one you’ve got ♫ 3 Doors Down ♫

Posted on by crystal · 117 Comments

Only Marshall can make beauty out of violence

♫ Just gonna stand there and watch me burn ♫

♫ That’s alright because I like the way it hurts ♫

♫ Just gonna stand there and hear me cry ♫

♫ That’s alright because I love the way you lie ♫

I bumped into this song in a very interesting way. I was having a chat with a very special person, who just happens to be an ex Mr 3CB. We have the same taste in music, so he’s always sending me songs and stuff. Today, he sent me three suggestions. The second song was Beautiful from Relapse, and the third was a song about nonpoints and bullets which made me giggle for a really long time, though I’m still not sure why. I didn’t much like the Relapse song. Too much jazz. But I’ve been playing this one non-stop. The count is at 55.

At first, I wasn’t sure just what I liked. I’ve had the song on my iTunes for months, but I didn’t pay much attention. I mean really … Eminem featuring Rihanna? How now? I glanced at the song info and skipped it more than once. It took Sailor to make me sit up and listen, and only because he has good taste.

When I heard Rihanna whining in the beginning, I was like wtf? But then her voice dies off suddenly and I’m like hmm, this could be interesting. When the beat began, I thought, ‘Hmm, catchy’. Then I started to listen to the words and I was gone. First, it has Em’s trademark rhyming. I just love the way he uses enjambment. Or, maybe it was caesura.

[Disclaimer: I had to Google that one. I know the technique from Mr Murimi and Lit 101, but I couldn’t remember the terms. I suck at details.]

Enjambment is when you stop a sentence in poetry [or rap] partway, to create rhyme and rhythm. Caesura is when you do the same with sound. I think.

♫ High off of love, drunk from my hate ♫

♫ It’s like I’m huffing pain and I love it the more I suffer, I suffocate ♫

♫ And right before I’m about to drown, she resuscitates ♫

♫ me. She fucking hates me and I love it. Wait! ♫

♫ Where you going? ‘I’m leaving you.’ No you ain’t ♫

♫ Come back we’re running right back. Here we go again. ♫

I just love the way he rhymes words that don’t rhyme. I like the tricky word play and the little puns you have to scrutinize to get. Stuff like huffing pain[t].

Of course it helps that the subject is deep, and that it’s handled so uniquely. It helps a lot more that the instrumentals are so awesome. I did more than my fair share of air strings – or whatevere it is they’re using to get the basso profundo. Is that what it was called? That effect where there’s a constant droning bass line? It might have been basso ostinato, I forget.

Anyway, this song clearly moved me. I tweeted about it for well over an hour, and I’m still OCD-ing as we speak. There’s something magical about the way some songs grab me, shake me, and won’t let me go. I’m just a little concerned that lately, a large number are done by Eminem.

There’s a part 2 to this song and I hunted it down on Twitter. It’s not as good as the original, though Em’s verse is amazing, and the song has some pretty serious drums. I thought about it more, whether this is really love, this furious, angstious dependency. It’s powerful and unhealthy, but you can’t deny its passion. I don’t think I want a ‘love’ like that. It makes you feel alive, but it can kill you too.

Either way, I’d still like to buy Marshall tea and pick that brain of his. As long as he doesn’t go Mariah on me. I’m just saying.

♫ Love the way you lie ♫ Eminem featuring Rihanna ♫

Posted on by crystal · 10 Comments

Last night my iTunes saved my life

It wasn’t actually last night – it was more like five minutes ago, but that title isn’t nearly as catchy.

The worst thing with depression is the cycle. You get down, you come up, you get down, you come up, you get down … you start thinking it’s not worth coming up again. After all, you’ll only be up a little while before you get back down.

Sunday was a really bad day for me. Monday was only slightly better. Tuesday was a breeze, Wednesday was so-so. Now it’s Thursday, and it’s safe to say I’m down again. Right back at Sunday.

I’ve been listening to my iTunes, mostly to drown out the Naija movie Princess is watching next door. The thing with iTunes is it’s random, so it plays the songs you least expect. And when you have 20 gigs of music, it sometimes plays things you didn’t know you had.

So it was that I heard Kiss from a rose by Seal. As teens, we said his soul is really hot – partly because of the song – but mostly coz he married Heidi Klum. I can’t even say it out loud.

There’s a part of that song that had lyrics I never quite heard. Something about towers and a hill, so I Googled the song and found them on azlyrics. As it turns out, it’s not hills, it’s a pill; and it’s not grave, it’s gray. Which makes the song ten times more cryptic and five times more deep. I’m going to Google an interpretation.

Point is, I was in deep with depression, thinking about Actifed and rope, then I got distracted by the music. I’m playing it now on OCD mode, and seeing if I can figure it out. It didn’t really change things, but it stopped far less healthy thoughts. I guess it’s a new coping mechanism.

When you love someone who likes to fix things, and he sees you’re something he can’t fix … things get a little crappy. But this is a sickness, and short of electric shock therapy, it really has no cure.

They say it’s a mental disease, and some think you can beat it with your mind. I don’t know about that. What I know is what my life coach taught me. I need to take it one day at a time, and focus on getting me safely through to bedtime.

I also sift the drama from the life, and that’s a lot harder than it seems. I have to see some things as details, and I have to let them go, even if it hurts. Butterflies and boomerangs and all that.

Okay, done. Now, seriously, what the eff is a kiss from a rose on the gray, and what does it have to do with Val Kilmer’s Batman? Heidi?