(I promise this will be my last music or iPod related entry for a while. I'm sure it's just as annoying as when I go on about baseball for too many entries in a row. Speaking of which! Milwaukee Brewers fans? I give you...Eric Gagne. You poor bastards.)
Anyway, we were also listening to Johnny Cash's version of "Hurt" yesterday and I mentioned that when I make up my playlist--and I will--of music to slit your wrists to, that'll definitely be on it. It was suggested to me that having such a playlist was perhaps in poor taste. Perhaps. But certainly I, of all people, am not mocking anyone's suicidal ideation. Clearly. It's just that, as I believe I've mentioned before, I occasionally need to listen to, wallow in even, a whole bunch of really dark, really bleak music because it paradoxically makes me feel much better. "Hurt" is a very dark, bleak song in and of itself, but the Cash version with him singing in that beautiful quavery old man's voice over the stark acoustic guitar, how can that not make you feel like you're being punched in the heart?
So, number two on the music to... playlist has got to be "Fell on Black Days" by Soundgarden, which I am also sure I have mentioned my lurve for. As well as my absolute lurve for Chris Cornell's voice. As I was messing about online this afternoon, I happened to look at Mr Cornell's wikipedia entry. Apparently, and I had no idea about this before (and being that it's wikipedia who knows if it's actually completely true?), but he was so deeply depressed as a young man that he at one point didn't leave his house for a whole year. Yeah, well, that may or may not remind me of someone whom I love dearly, but nevertheless it does make perfect sense to me. If I consider what I'd put on that playlist, it's pretty much all been written by people with histories of serious clinical depression. The essential bleakness that makes me feel both like I'm being punched in the heart and yet paradoxically better only comes from other people whose serotonin levels have been severely fucked at some point too. There's something in me that recognizes it. (And, yes, I do realize I sound like a complete douche saying that, thanks.)
But I contrast this to, say, "Can't Stand Losing You" by the Police, with its glib and manipulative suicide threat, and I think, yeah, that's a supposed depression song written by someone who has never actually been seriously depressed a day in their life.
xoxo
12 comments:
OK, now I'm the one who's going to have to slit my wrists... Eric Gagne with The Brewers.... Gaaacccck...
And the Brewers did so well last year, leading their division for most of the season, that I guess they felt they needed an extra handicap so they wouldn't beat the Cubs in their World Series Centenary year. :(
As for "Can't Stand Losing You", I think you're just assuming that anyone who looks as good as Sting (once did) and is fabulously wealthy and married to a supermodel and can have sex for 12 hours at a time can't ever possibly be depressed...
You don't know that--I mean, he could have had a bad hair day once or had his chauffeur crash his Ferrari or something... I mean, even people with an entirely perfect life could occasionally get a bit down, you just don't know. :p
Oh, sure, make fun of Sting again. You're just jealous of the 6 hour tantric orgasms. :-)
Seriously, though, I think that's one of the misconceptions that people who have never been biochemically depressed have about it: that depression is just feeling really sad or really down, when IME it's a totally different feeling. Like when D was in the hospital last year, I was really sad and really scared and--as those of you who lived through it with me in either real or cyber life know--I cried every day for a whole bunch of weeks, but I was *not* depressed.
I can contrast that to the two or three times in my life when I've been seriously depressed. That feeling was an overwhelming soul-sucking blackness, a feeling of complete worthlessness and hopelessness, an inability to conceive of things ever getting better and an inability to remember what being happy felt like.
I'm willing to believe from his songwriting that Mr Cornell may have had some of those feelings when he stayed in his bedroom for a year. Mr Sting, even if he was ever really really sad because somebody keyed his Ferrari or he ran out of the good hair gel, not so much :-)
I could be wrong though.
I'm thinking you're just interested in trying out those six hour orgasms for yourself... And what does Sting do after four hours? Does he rush off to the emergency room like the Cialis ads tell him he should?
I'm relatively sure, though, that if Mr. Sumner knocked on your front door and told you "The Bed's Too Big Without You" you'd probably find it within yourself to suspend your anti-rockstar standards to investigate his tantric prowess.
Anyway, until I took that Topamax earlier in the year I don't think I ever had a real good idea of what being seriously clinically depressed was really like. Although I know know that being really really sad/upset may not be the same thing at all, it sure does feel pretty bad, too and can often use some real help, as well.
But I'm not sure that Sting has ever felt either sets of emotion.
(I was thinking today that, should I ever off myself, it utterly removes my infinitesimal-but still cosmically possible--chances of ever having sex with Catherine Zeta-Jones or Nicole Kidman... and that's a good reason to stick around, just in case we somehow end up on a desert island together...)
Amy Speace. Shed This Skin. Elvis Costello. Poisoned Rose. Anything by Warren Zevon. (Can't decide between I'll Sleep When I'm Dead and Ain't That Pretty At All).
A coworker once referred to this particular portion of my 'Pod as the "morose music" section, and I was defensive about it, right up until I realized that she was right, and so what about that.
I don't think I've known real depression since the hormonal ravages of my adolescence, but I've never found the expression of it to be anything but cathartic. "I threw away your alibis and all your worn out clothes". Yeah.
I would so turn Sting and any other member of his band away, because *I told you* I'm saving myself for Anthony Kiedis. God. Pay attention :-)
And I thought *you* were saving yourself for Kate Winslet, not Nicole Kidman.
I will gently point out that you and Mr Barma both apparently have some sort of bias against American wimmin as fantasy objects. :-)
It's the accent thing. Works for them. Doesn't work for Madonna. You can hear the difference, right? But, in the interest of compromise, I'd be willing to let Catherine defer to a cross between Janeane Garofalo and Annabella Sciorria, or better yet, a tag team of both of them, just to show my patriotism. MMMmmmm.
"And I thought *you* were saving yourself for Kate Winslet, not Nicole Kidman. "
Hey, I want to date Kate Winslet, that's, like, totally different.
I'm going solely on aesthetic values here. Well, and the fact that Nicole Kidman likes short guys, if she actually likes guys at all, and that Catherine Zeta-Jones apparently goes for older, gnomic looking Jewish guys.
Though if you want to limit me to those with natural American accents, how about Gwyneth Paltrow or Mira Sorvino or Sarah Michelle Gellar? Of course, we've seen that Gwyneth Paltrow prefers guys with English accents, and Sarah Michelle Gellar apparently likes pretty boys, while given Mira Sorvino's visual tastes I'd actually be somewhat concerned if she threw herself at me. Not enough to stop her, you understand, just concerned a bit in quiet moments.
But see, that's 150% more reasons to stick around, cause any one of those women (I'll throw in Isla Fisher, too) could someday find themselves in Boston, desperate and wacko, and could, for reasons known only to a very benevolent God, force themselves upon me... but that could never possibly happen if I'm six feet under.
And I totally forgot about Phoebe Cates... who also likes bearded Jewish guys.
Speaking from abundant experience, the trouble with music for depression is that it supposes you're in a place where the music can actually reach you, one way or another. I find the worst places are the ones where nothing moves you except the idea of release. It's rather a struggle to get past those.
The good thing about successful suicidal music is that you get to do it more than once, whilst the successful suicide is a one-time act.
*NOW* aren't we all happy?
Of course we are. We found a sucker to take Eric Gagne.
PS...I do think there's a connection between the way Sting looks and the 6 hour orgasms...
"We found a sucker to take Eric Gagne."
Don't know what The Brewers are thinking (not very much, apparently) but the Red Sox didn't have to do anything about Eric Gagne. He was entirely a free agent, under no obligation to the Sox or vice versa.
Now now, we feel your pain, we really do. If Gagne joins that long list of former Sox pitchers who turn into Cy Young material at their next stop, you'll get even, yes?
If Gagne wins anything at all next year (except for a vulture save where he coughs up the big lead only to have Prince Fielder win it back in the bottom of the 9th on a three-run walk-off dinger) I'll personally write him an apology for all the nasty things I've said about him for the past six months.
Which does bring up an interesting point, as to whether or not he owes US an apology for personally making the 2007 AL East race interesting when it never should have been.
He is so over.
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