Wouldn’t life be so much easier if you could just compartmentalize all your complicated emotions and situations into a music video? When you find yourself in deep thought, there would be pseudo-tangible images to refer back to. Imagine this – you choose a song that captures your mood and listen to it on repeat. Then you mentally produce the video, as you lay awake in a bed full of sorrow, crying like you’ve never cried before OR as you smile at the world, romanticizing the possibilities. Finally, you export it and store it away, either permanently or for easy access. It’s that SIMPLE.
The thing is, a lot of us actually do this ALL THE TIME. Rather than choosing the song however, it’s the song that chooses us. The song that plays in the background while sharing a moment with someone is concatenated and auto-saved in your mental hard drive. Or the song that plays on the radio, while you’re either at the crest or the trough of your emotional wave, becomes a permanent reference point engrained in your memory. We mistake coincidence for fate, and exaggerate the meaning of the moment. The song, that JUST HAPPENED TO PLAY at that EXACT MOMENT becomes “the theme song”, “my song”, “your song”, “our song”, etc. When I was a kid, this was called imagination. But now it’s just plain dramatic. Sigh. Just because we’re adults, why do we have to let go of coping mechanisms that make emotions easier to handle? Fuck it. I still do it. Why overwhelm myself with a million shades of gray when I can choose between black and white? And we all know I would choose black.
I’m GUILTY of this. In my most vulnerable moments, I tend to lose myself in a song. I enter a state of Limbo in which my daydreams can feel so vividly real. I either fall in a deep hole as the words strangle the tears and sobs out of my body OR I’m on cloud 9 floating amidst the chorus with one hand in my pocket, while the other is holding a glass of Grand Marnier. Black and white. It’s that SIMPLE.
But then there comes a phase in our lives when the only thing that emotionally overwhelms us are the questions we ask about OURSELVES. Specifically, it is the questions that we ask in the context of ONLY OURSELVES. Who am I? We can hope for our lives and situations to end up like a music video, knowing it’ll be resolved in due time – it’s easy. We can live vicariously through others as opposed to living our own realities – it’s easy. We can know that it doesn’t affect us directly and that the outcomes are predictable – it’s easy. But of course, it’s a FALSE REALITY, and we have a fear of putting ourselves out there.
I’M in that phase of MY LIFE. When the questions have become so personalized, I CAN’T just ignore the million shades of gray. I can go about my day and pretend that everything is business as usual, fool others along the way… but I can’t fool myself. These past 2 weeks, in my most vulnerable moments, I zoned out at work, at a party, and at brunch with my best friend – the song literally found me, all 3 times. fuck black. fuck white. and fuck gray. Let's add some color to this canvass. PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.
The song is a mellow positive track that lets us know, more or less - that it's ALL GOOD (until you read between the lines). Throw in synthesizers playing several slow high notes, sync it up with the bass, piano, a few guitar notes here and there and viola! The feeling of the combined sounds and mellow lyrics is laid back, creating an atmosphere of relaxation that causes the listener to contemplate one's true happiness and true self. True story.
[stay tuned for the video premiere]
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