Musings on emotional music.

Music does terrible things to me. It's a major contributor to my emotional self-harm, a terrible habit i've been trying to break in the last year or so (but one which i have been a slave to for, oh, twenty years). I love music, i form deep emotional bonds with it, but i tie it to events and people in my life so strongly that even if i hear a song years after i have created this bond, it can still bring a tear to my tired, ridiculous eyes if the feelings are negative - and they almost always are. Because even songs that are tied to good memories become miserable when i think about those good times which once were and will never be again. Cry, cry, cry.

But anyway. I don't do that shit anymore. I let go of sentimentality, of whingeyness, and put away all my Augie March and Damien Rice albums. I still adore those artists, and i miss their music (because they do make truly beautiful music), but i simply can't listen to them anymore because of the misery they conjure up. Regina Spektor? Sorry, i have to leave the room in tears. Speedstar? I know YOU've never heard of them, but they make me cry. Sugarcult's "Memory" and the Scrubs theme? I'll get a sad, faraway look in my eye and become really boring while i remember stuff. Machine Translations? Sigh, that reminds me of...  Fuck that shit. I'm tired of it.

But this week i accidentally allowed myself to listen to Augie March for the first time in a year or so. Damn, they make gorgeous music. But one of my favourites came on (or one of the worst ones, depending how you look at it) - "The Night Is A Blackbird", from Strange Bird. Whilst in the depths of my depression over the past few years, the lyrics of this song tortured me - these in particular:

There's a question to be asked if you're drinking alone
It's "What horse were you thrown from which riderless goes on"?

I feel a lump in my throat just typing those words. I hear Glenn's voice in my head. (My relationship with Augie March is longer than any real relationship i've had - i've loved them since i was eighteen, when i first heard "Asleep in Perfection". I know them very well. I miss them.) But back to my point.

God damn you, Augie March. I thought these words were so insightful, but perhaps they were doing more harm than good. You see, that's the way i saw my life. That it had continued without me. I went off course, fell down, and it left me behind. That all the things i'd planned were lost, that i'd never catch up, that i'd lost everything without hope of recovery. And i heard Glenn sing those words, and my heart wailed in despair. "It's true!" i cried. "It's gone, it's all gone. I'm a failure, i've lost everything."

When i heard those lyrics the other day, i stopped. And i thought, "How could you, Glenn? How could you articulate despair so beautifully that it fitted in exactly with my pain and made me believe its scale was so large?" What a destructive thought, that my life was over at twenty-nine, that there was no point continuing because there was no salvaging the life i'd lost. That all my plans were so closely tied to the person that left my life that without him, i was nothing. That he probably continued with life exactly as we'd planned it - but without me.

I still feel the sadness that Augie March conjures up. But a lot of the self-loathing has gone. I see now that my life isn't over, that although i was thrown from one horse, i can leap astride another and ride on. It just took me a while to find another figurative horse. And for the first time in years, i am galloping with the wind in my hair.