When I was at the elementary school, my roommate (classmate then) had a habit of recording songs she liked from the radio. As I did not have conditions for doing the same, I often borrowed her collection of cassettes and thus our taste in music became similar. I knew what I was listening to thanks to my classmate’s perfectionism in labeling everything the moment she recorded it.
Times have changed, but some habits remained. I have my own mp3/FM player now, and thus can enjoy doing what I was only dreaming of as a child. When I listen to the radio (usually when I wash the dishes or go to buy some food) and hear a song/melody I particularly like and don’t know it’s name, I simply press the "record " button and later, when I have time, I can google the lyrics, find out whose work it is, listen to some more music from the internet and decide whether I like more of his/her work. This is the most frequent method of my discovering nice music and falling in love with it. Of course my friends are sometimes recommending and giving me some music they like, and sometimes a great epiphany comes out of it, but sometimes it is not quite my cup of tea. I tried to participate in the Last.FM project, trying to keep some kind of songs – I-am-listening-to diary, but it did not work… my actual music taste depends on my state of mind very much and my states of mind are changing quite rapidly.
Yesterday evening for example. It was a cold night and a perfect full moon (which always brings me to a very melancholic mood full of memories), was spying on me through the windows and saw, that my hands and eyes were not able to write anymore…
So I switched off the laptop and switched on my mp3…wanted to talk to it (meaning: record some of my thoughts concerning the essays which I was able to formulate but not write down anymore)…but I came across the FM recordings I must have taken more than half a year ago… Just out of curiosity I pressed “play”. And that was fatal for my essay thoughts.
The first melody that came out almost made me dance and at the same time was echoing in my heart quite painfully…”I go back to black”. Call me an outlaw, but I didn’t know whose voice it was, until I searched for it this morning. I can remember that Katie was shoving me a clip of Amy Winehouse’s "Rehab" in December, but however impressed was I with her voice, I did not like the singer because of her "Paris Hilton" behaviour and scandals…and did not recognize her voice in this song…but I liked it and it was filling my eyes with tears yesterday…so Happy birthday to you, Amy.
Then I listened to further recordings, which came out in this order:REM –Drive; Eels – Novocaine for the soul; Hammerfall – Never, ever. When the Scorpions started singing :I’m still loving you, I couldn’t bear it anymore, switched the player off and tried to get to sleep…impossible, the loneliness of the silence was even worse.
I then thought that listening to the radio will help. Perhaps there would be one of those „Jerome Klapka Jerome readings" or at least BBC news to make me think of something else than my sadness…Oh, foolish me. The moment I switched the player on, there was still „Still loving you“.
I couldn’t believe that, but it really was not my mistake, that was what they were playing in the radio in real time. I tried several radio stations, but perhaps because of the full moon, all of them were playing this "love is a bitch and life not worth living without it" kind of songs, so the song that finally saved me (the only one that had a bit of hope inside, as it goes from "no one can help me" to "can you help me?" and the melody is a positive one, too), was Runaway train by Soul Asylum.
So tired that I couldn't even sleep
So many secrets I couldn't keep
Promised myself I wouldn't weep
One more promise I couldn't keep
...
Like a madman laughin' at the rain
Little out of touch, little insane
Just easier than dealing with the pain
No comments:
Post a Comment