I wish I knew what to do with you,
But the truth is I ain’t got a clue,
Do you? Do You?
I wish I had an idea of what I need,
But we, oh we, can’t know and that’s okay,
That’s okay.
I wish you’d understand,
I wish that I could know,
The truth is I have no idea.
I wish we could just run around
And only worry about right now,
I hate to admit it but I don’t know shit
And neither do you, do you, do you,
And that is good enough
For me, for you, for now,
As long as we can talk about it
This phenomena started on the day of my 8th grade graduation. Although middle school had been absolutely life-scarring, I still have fond memories. I still have friends I would die for. And realizing I was probably never going to see some of them again, the fact that it was a rainy day, made me start crying in the car after my parents and I had left. It was at a gas station. “Where the Streets Have No Name” by U2, who at that point was a band I was only just starting to discover, popped into my head. My brain pulled the lyrics that had been subconsciously stuck in the recesses of my mind because it deemed them fit, and sought to comfort me. That song was the one I sang to myself repeatedly all throughout the summer leading up to high school.
“Oh and I see you. I see our love turn to rust. Oh we’re beaten and blown by the wind. Blown by the wind. And when I go there, I go there with you. It’s all I can do.”
Enter freshmen year of high school. I won’t go into details here, because it’s deeply personal and not something I have ever spoken about to anyone, but basically after two weeks, I intensely despised my new environment. (Which in retrospect is funny, because most people start out loving their school and then hating it, but I started out hating it, and then actually kinda sorta liking it a bit.) I would purposely take a longer route to school, and then walk as slow as I could to delay my entrance into the building. I spent a lot of time alone. I listened to a lot of Nirvana. But the only song that seemed to keep me from going off the edge was “Heart-Shaped Box.” I think it was the raw emotion that appealed to me most. I listened to it whenever I felt like I could no longer bear the weight. And freshmen year passed, I made friends. I came to terms with a lot of inner demons. Because of that song.
“She eyes me like a Pisces when I am weak. I’ve been locked inside your heart-shaped box for weeks. I’ve been drawn into your magnet tar pit trap. I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn black.”
Now it’s the middle of sophomore year. My mind is spinning with thoughts that revolve around God, Christianity, and just religion in general. I called it my spiritual crisis, and it wasn’t pretty. At one point I burst out loud into a passion fueled rant in lunch and my friends had to subdue me gently. I just felt so incredibly disillusioned with the idea of organized religion, structured worship, and the beliefs that people perpetuate that contradict the essence of what I think God should be like. I was, and still am, so confused about it. But back then, I was barely beginning to allow myself to stop pretending that I could ever be an individual with great faith. There’s always going to be a cynical side to my optimism and innocence, not just about religion, but everything. Again, U2 provided the perfect track: “Acrobat.”
“Don’t believe what you hear. Don’t believe what you see. If you just close your eyes, you can feel the enemy. When I first met you girl, you had fire in your soul. What happened your face of melting snow.”
Okay, this one’s a bit cheesy. ..a lot cheesy actually. And stupid. But it’s important to me even though it shouldn’t be so shut up. Earlier this year, for the first time in my life, I confessed my attraction towards a boy. I waited for a response. And waited. Finally, I e-mailed one of our mutual friends and asked what was going on. He told me rather bluntly that the object of my affections is a selfish bastard who didn’t have the courage to tell me that he wasn’t interested in the slightest, himself. I read the e-mail during my lunch, because I was desperate to know as soon as possible what had happened. I started smiling. Chuckling. I felt myself shutting down emotionally. I couldn’t think of anything else to do online so I closed the browser and logged out. I went to my locker and once again, the phenomenon occurred. My brain knew somehow that I needed to hear “High and Dry” by Radiohead.
“Two jumps in a week, I bet you think you’re pretty clever, don’t you boy? Climbing on your motorcycle, watching all the ground beneath you drop. You’d kill yourself for recognition, you’d kill yourself to never ever stop. You broke another mirror—you’re turning into something you are not.”
So yeah. These four songs are very special to me. My brain picked them for me in my hour of need, without me ever consciously saying “God I really think this song would make me feel better.”
And I’m very thankful to these artists for creating songs that so resonate within my mind and comfort me when I need it most.
~~master-of-nothing
