2000-12-01 - 1:37
That's all there is of me
So I realized this week that I was okay with how things shook down with Jian and I. Was it that by Monday I went back to sleeping normally again? Well, that was a good sign. Was it the fact that Jian and I ended up staying up super-late talking a couple of nights, getting along great? Yeah, that definitely helped.
But the real tip-off that I wasn't too upset: music. As I predicted with my Saturday morning entry, I didn't end up reaching for my Nick Cave CDs. No Boatman's Call, no Let Love In, no Cohen, Volume Four did not hit the CD player . . . so I couldn't have been doing too badly. Okay, "Who Will Love Me Now" found its way onto the playlist once; but I'm allowed a little indulgence.
The timing worked out so perfectly on this one, coinciding with me finally reading High Fidelity, a story about love, relationships, and music. There is a passage that Liam made me read when he picked up the book, which has interested me ever since:
Some of my favourite songs: "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" by Neil Young; "Last Night I Dreamed That Somebody Loved Me" by the Smiths; "Call Me" by Aretha Franklin; "I Don't Want to Talk About It" by anybody. And then there's "Love Hurts" and "When Love Breaks Down" and "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" and "The Speed of the Sound of Loneliness" and "She's Gone" and "I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself" and . . . some of these songs I had listened to around once a week, on average (three hundred times in the first month, every now and again thereafter), since I was sixteen or nineteen or twenty-one. How can that not leave you bruised somewhere? How can that not turn you into the sort of person liable to break into little bits when your first love goes all wrong? What came first--the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person?Liam and I argued about that concept for a while; but it definitely rang true to a degree. In a way, the full idea of that paragraph applies a lot stronger for my reactions the last time, which was the end of a rather serious relationship, than this time, which was the sputtering of something that had just begun. But I do still find it interesting that I analyze and describe my emotional state in terms of music. (Hell, I even chose my finishing words two sentences ago, because the background task of my brain was playing the Violent Femmes and hearing "why'd it have to stop when it's just begun.")
High Fidelity certainly struck (too?) close to home with me. One passage that particularly caught me was when the protaganist discusses how he and his girlfriend have changed interests. And when she says that she has lost interest in music, he replies by saying that's all there is of him.
And while I didn't miss the character development after that conversation, the line lingered. I think that it's me. My home page is essentially a list of my CDs, which grows at a ridiculous rate, a list of concert reviews, and a bunch of silly pictures. One of the four sections on my links page is Music; and the one book that I actually reviewed was written by Nick Cave.
I do have other interests; I can get into an interesting book, I like playing around on computers (to a degree), I love a good argument. But I have no other passion.
Which leads me back into the whole topic of relationships. High Fidelity states that "it's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently, or if your favourite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party."
A review for the movie Vinyl that I read in the Ottawa X-Press had a similar thought. The movie is about obsessive record collectors; and the idea was this: if you are that involved with music, it's difficult to form a relationship, because you're effectively telling someone, "Here is my world that I go into and you can't be a part of" as you're asking them to commit to you.
And no, I don't consider myself as extremely focused as those profiled in Vinyl. But I do wonder if anyone can know me and make a truly deep connection if they don't understand why I would need to put on Black Sabbath Volume Four when I was depressed. Or why I would make a mix tape, in my head or for real, to describe my reaction to someone. Or why I pinpoint the Rollins Band concert as the beginning of my emotional return this year. Or why I would fly to New York on a day's notice to see Einst�rzende Neubauten. Or why I wouldn't take a phone call in the middle of watching Instrument for the first time. Or why I hear the first three seconds of "So Real" and I'm back in the Chooch's Creighton Street apartment.
Or why . . .
Maybe I can't say "that's all there is of me." But it does make me wonder if I need to find someone who understands that passion.
J.