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Auto: me too...
Sorry I went off on one... got a lot of respect for you too, and I realise I singled you out unfairly. I'll leave the post unedited (as is my wont) as a cautionary tale to those who may post with their flamethrowers on 'extra crispy'...
To be honest, like (I think) Bio said, it is all relative. However, I think what I was trying to say (or, more likely, intended to say before the Self-Righteous Gimp took over my typin' fingers) is that you shouldn't, and certainly can't justifiably, put down the feelings and reactions of others when you've never been in a certain situation (or if you have, you found a different way through).
First of all, this question is nothing to do with kids wallowing in a World Where Only Trent Reznor Understands them. But even if it was, that experience is formative for some people in creating a healthy adult persona that can survive everyday trauma. There are a lot of 'reconstructed goths' out there who hide Sisters vinyl in their attic and dig out 'Some Kind Of Stranger' every once in a while and remember the person they were, who sacrificed themselves to be the person they've become. In summer, they sometimes tan deep enough so that you can see the whiteness of the scars on their arms. It may seem silly, childish, attention-seeking, whatever, and you (all who think so) have a right to your various opinions on the subject... but for some of the people undergoing such episodes, it does feel real, and it does seem like the end of the world - or, more accurately, all there is. I have scars on my arms too, you know, from much less 'credible' fuck-ups than the one described above. The event of the above post occurred when I'd sorted a lot of my shit out. It was the drunken result of an appallingly bad end of an important relationship (involving true love, betrayal, lies, a frame-job, Giants, Fencing, Miracles...), and nearly a litre of scotch.
However, I've stubbed cigarettes out on my arms at home, in clubs, on the street. At the time, I wasn't in tears, crushed, recently and unhappily single, or anything like that. There wasn't any specific catalyst or signifier - I was simply horribly desensitised, and for a while didn't see any qualitative difference between my arm and an ashtray - except that grinding a fag out on my arm hurt for a few seconds, and I felt something. So in that sense, it was actually infinitely preferable to an ashtray. I'm not the only person on Barbelith to have felt or done a similar thing, I know that. I'm certainly not insinuating that I'm special or somehow 'deeper' because of it. For what it's worth, I'm an intelligent and articulate man, and I still fell into the hole. Life's like that, occasionally.
And take the piss all you like, the Ganeshes of this world, wiv yer sarkier-than-thou, and yer worldy-wise... but Steve Hogarth's lyrics got me through, virtually on their own. I didn't know how to get out of the hole, and didn't want to get help, because I didn't really relate to anyone else, and had a chronic time talking full-stop, never mind about serious things to do with Little Me... a combination of a relatively serious speech impediment and the above-mentioned problem with perceived lack of feeling.
The lyrics meant something to me, purely because they smacked of a person who'd come out the other side from similar shit, and become able to see beauty in himself and in others again. Someone who saw strength in optimism, not 'cheesiness' or any aspect of the impractical or the unrealistic.
'Cathedral Wall', 'Beyond You', 'Holidays In Eden', and the Brave album, to name a few examples from Marillion's back catalogue, are constructions - memories of a now-dead person - and the more cathartic because of it, for him to write and sing, and for me to listen to.
And 'Beautiful', 'Go!', 'Rich', 'Deserve', and all the utterly unselfconscious, heartfelt and passionate love songs the guy's written, come from who he is now, someone who isn't ashamed to look forward, who can look back on his past while embracing his future. Which is who I am now.
Here, this is what I mean:
quote:The Space...
On top of the world like a flag on a mountain
Feeling so high you can feel so alone
Unable to breathe at the height that you flew
Staring on clouds with no view of below
On top of a girl like a dream in a hotel
Falling towards something out of control
Unable to miss like the man in the tram
Crashing your car in Amsterdam
He did it without knowing, didn't feel a thing
He just wrecked it and kept going
The space around the stars
Is something that you know
A billion miles of darkness
Left your feeling low
The space around the stars
Is something that you know
Everything about you
So perfectly restrained
But everything inside you
Bites you
Everybody in the whole of the world
Feels the same inside
Everybody in the whole of the world
Everyone is only everyone else
Everybody's got to know
Everybody lives and loves and laughs and cries
And eats and sleeps and grows and dies
Everybody in the whole of the world
Is the same this time
Is the same inside
In the whole of the world
That describes the transformative process I went through. Loads of people have done a similar thing, led to it in different ways - a redemptive relationship (lover/parent/child, whatever), a religious experience, a book, a film... for me it was a singer and a band, not just as an inspiration, but as an example.
So I guess that's how music really saved my life. The above is just a gruesome and arresting extrapolation upon the same theme.
OK, you can go ahead now with the ridicule... |
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riginally posted by a man called lentil: