8 posts tagged “loss”
Forbidden to remember, terrified to forget; it was a hard line to walk.
New Moon, Stephenie Meyer
1. Somewhat Damaged - Nine Inch Nails
"How could I ever think?
It's funny how everything that swore it wouldn't change is different now
Just like you would always say 'we'll make it through'
Then my head fell apart, and where were you?"
2. Astronaut (A Short History of Nearly Nothing) - Amanda Palmer
"Is it getting easy to pretend
That life goes on without you in the wake
And can you see the means without the end
In the random frantic action that we take?"
3. Dying - Hole
"And now I understand
You leave with everything
You leave with everything I am
Withering
And now I know that love is dead
You've come to bury me..."
4. Never Is A Promise - Fiona Apple
"You say you'll understand - you'll never understand
I say I'll never wake up knowing how or why
I don't know what to believe in
You don't know who I am
You say I'll need appeasing when I start to cry
But never is a promise
And I'll never need a lie."
5. The Day After - Sunshine State
"Love will get you through anything
But a day like today
They tell me there's always more fish in the sea
This one got away...
On the day after, the future looks lonely
But at least now I'm too tired to cry..."
6. Early Winter - Gwen Stefani
"It's sad
The map of the world is on you
The moon gravitates around you...
The sun's getting cold; it's snowing
Looks like an early winter for us..."
7. Tallymarks - Thao Nguyen
"That same winter my old man made tracks
And I did too - but I came back
So don't don't don't explain love to me
Love love love is not why we leave...
I drop drop tears like tallymarks
And I'm keeping score, so I keep us apart
But I think I might miss you enough to say so..."
8. Brighter - Paramore
"Without you, I will feel so small
And if it ends today
I'll still say that you shone brighter than anyone
Now I think we're taking this too far
Don't you know that it's not this hard?"
9. The Grace - Neverending White Lights w/ Dallas Green
"Angels say they can make you suffer
Give and take like a vicious lover...
You're not coming back to me; these things, they will never be
I'm so used to being wrong - so put me where I belong
I'll get back to you - God knows I'll try
But I still lose..."
10. Done Wrong - Ani Difranco
"How could you beg me to stay
Reach out your hands and plead
Then pack up your eyes and run away
As soon as I agreed?"
11. Try Not To Breathe - R.E.M.
"I will try not to burden you
I can hold these inside
I will hold my breath until all these shivers subside
Just look in my eyes
I will try not to bother you
I have seen things that you will never see
Just leave it to memory, me
I shudder to breathe..."
12. All Dressed Up - Veruca Salt
"You don't even notice me
Moving you like a ton of glaciers
You don't even notice me
Soothing you like a long lost sister
No you don't even care...
I'm all dressed up, and you're just a song..."
13. Hey Jupiter (Dakota version) - Tori Amos
"No one's picking up the phone
Guess it's clear he's gone
And this little masochist is lifting up her dress..."
14. To Be Free - Emiliana Torrini
"Once in a house on a hill
A boy got angry
He broke into my heart...
It shouldn't hurt me to be free
It's what I really need to hold myself together
But if it's so good being free, would you mind telling me
Why I don't know what to do with myself?"
15. Wasted Time (live) - The Eagles
"And the hours go by like minutes,
And the shadows come to stay
So you take a little something to make them go away...
Sometimes to keep it together, you got to leave it alone."
16. White Flag - Dido
"I know I left too much mess and destruction to come back again
I cause nothing but trouble
I understand if you can't talk to me again
And if you live by the rules of 'it's over' then I'm sure that that makes sense
But I will go down with this ship
I won't hold my hands up and surrender..."
17. Maybe - Kelly Clarkson
"Someday, when we're at the same place
When we're on the same road
When it's okay to hold my hand
Without feeling lost
Without all the excuses
When it's just because you love me, you let me, you need me
Then maybe...
Should know better than to touch the fire twice..."
18. I Hope Your Heart Runs Empty - Neverending White Lights w/ Scott Anderson
"Stole a look away from your eyes
Stole a look and finally paid your price
Tethered fresh, trampled thoughts, look for me
Look at this face
Everywhere there's new mistakes..."
19. Try, Try, Try - The Smashing Pumpkins
"And we have survived
Try to hold on
And no one should deny
We tried to hold on to the pulse of the feedback current
Into the flow of encrypted movement..."
20. It's All Over But The Crying - Garbage
"Certain things turn ugly when you think too hard
And nagging little thought change into things you can't turn off
Everything you think you know baby
Is wrong...
Now I can't walk back
I can't leave behind..."
21. The Scientist - Coldplay
"Nobody said it was easy
Oh it's such a shame for us to part
Nobody said this was easy
But no one ever said it would be this hard
Oh take me back to the start..."
22. Konstantine (live) - Something Corporate
"My Konstantine
I watch her spin around me like a dream
We played out on this movie screen
And I said
Did you know I miss you...
I'll always miss you."
Relevant in so many ways... Today would have been my grandfather's 70th birthday, if he lived to see it. And just as I was at a concert as he was passing slowly on, I will be at this band's show in 15 hours... For every loss, death or heartbreak, this speaks to me now.
away so slowly
you don't even notice till you've lost a lot
I've been like one of those zombies
in vegas
pouring quarters into a slot
and now I'm tired
and I am broke
and I feel stupid and I feel used
and I'm at the end of my little rope
and I am swinging back and forth
about you
before it gets so cold
that the rain turns to snow
there's just a couple things
I'd like to know
like how could you do nothing
and say, I'm doing my best
how could you take almost everything
and then come back for the rest
how could you beg me to stay,
reach out your hands and plead
and then pack up your eyes and run away
as soon as I agreed?"
Done Wrong - Ani Difranco
Everyone has a relationship, where things fluctuate, where things ebb and flow... And yet, it's meant to be. Or so you think.
But life has a way of upending things, of turning them on their heads and making yours spin into oblivion. Life has a way of leaving you standing alone, clinging to desperate wanting, desperate inner pleas inside your mind. You feel, so clearly, that to part will forever haunt you both. But there you are, turning around slowly and walking away from the one thing you wanted to hold onto, the one thing that mattered.
Everyone wants to erase and rewind. Everyone wants that second chance. Sometimes, people just aren't willing to choose it. They say if you love something, you set it free; if it's meant to be yours, it will return again. I have never set someone free before with that aspiration, with that intent. When I have set someone free, it is usually because I cannot give them what they need or deserve, or they cannot ever measure up for me, so to string them along is cruelty. I have tasted the bitterness of setting free someone you would shackle yourself to, if you believed it would be a fruitful way to hang on to their light, and there is nothing worse. It taints everything: food, drink, sleep. You look in the mirror with loathing, with incredulous eyes wondering how you could do such a thing.
Love isn't supposed to be sunshine and kittens, It isn't supposed to be blissful and easy. Love - true love, enduring love - is work. Love is loving the flaws, and not merely criticizing but wanting, more than anything, to watch another person grow to become the potential within, that dream they are afraid to reach out and take hold of. After all, no one writes songs about the ones that come easy.
But one person cannot work alone. The pyramids were not built by a single person, and nor is a good love. It's foolish to believe that you can hold the weight of the world upon your shoulders and not break your back eventually, no longer able to stand from the agony of that loneliness.
Sometimes, to understand what we have, we must lose it, or risk that loss. My only wish now, is for understanding.
It always comes back to music for me.
Music is my soundtrack to all of life's events, both trivial and tantamount to shaping who have become and am becoming. Music fuels me when nothing else can motivate me to keep pressing forward. Music makes me laugh, and cry. Music is cathartic, especially live. As Third Eye Blind once sang, "The four right chords could make me cry."
Music is there, even when it's 4am and no one's answering their phone or online. Music is fun and silly, and intelligent and challenging. Music can evoke a mood, or change it for the better.
Music is my oxygen.
Music can also take me back, certain songs triggering memories so succinctly that they feel real again, feel as if the events were unfolding right this moment. I can close my eyes and remember it all: the way I felt, how cold or warm I was, who was there and what we did. Certain lyrics will forever affect me, forever connect to certain people or places. Such is the case with Pictures of Success by Rilo Kiley. In late 2007, I suddenly found myself feeling suffocated by life, by my failed aspirations, by my own mood swings, and by the illnesses in my family, namely my grandfather and father. I had to escape. I had to leave town and recharge completely.
In the end, with a lot of luck, as if the universe understood what I was in need of, I found myself in California right before my birthday, and spent the actual day slinging back margaritas with some of my best friends in the world on a patio in Tijuana. It was perfect weather for me - late spring temperatures for my home city, with sunny skies and breeze. Everything about that trip was exactly as I wanted it to be. In the entire month of November, I'd blared Pictures of Success over and over, as if willing the fates to work out, singing along: "They say California is a recipe for a black hole/And I say I've got my best shoes on/I'm ready to go..." And I was ready. I walked away from that trip in late December, turning to my boyfriend and saying, "That was what I needed. I feel strong again. I feel ready to cope now."
That was December 17th, 2007. By December 1st, 2008, my foreboding feelings over my grandfather had proven terribly true, with my grandfather going from back pain to heart attack to cancer to terminal to passing away. So much can happen in a year, much more than we ever anticipate. I dare not consider how well I would have handled that year without that time in the sun, to breathe in the ocean air and revive myself.
And even now, as I miss him terribly, that song drifts into my head, to remind me of that strength I found. I wish I had a plane ticket now; I'm definitely ready to go, once more.
But I can be some courage at the side of your bed..."
Thief - Our Lady Peace
Dedicated to my Nanny....
Bravely you let go of my hand
I can't speak yet you understand
Where I go now I go alone
This path I walk these days of stone
[Chorus:]
I must go away
Wait for me here
Silently stay
And don't ask me why
Only believe
This is not good bye
All of my strength all my desire
Still cannot melt this breath of fire
I go to meet some kind of test
Bury the truth that scars my chest
And the angels are calling and calling
[Chorus]
I gathered all my courage
I shaved off all my fear
With this banner on my shoulder
I hold your essence near
And the angels are calling and calling and calling
[Chorus]
This Is Not Goodbye - Melissa Etheridge
"At first the melody would come and walk with me through the mists in North Cornwall England. I would take this melody back to the Hammond Organ, the B3. I would sit and play with this for hours. Soon I began to have to deal with my mother's heart condition and she survived a cardiac arrest in September. Because of this I began thinking about the life cycle and that dying is part of the life cycle. Even though I realized this, logically, I couldn't accept the idea of losing my mother emotionally. The song started to become clearer as the days went by and I began to realize that the Beekeeper that had taken my character in the song, to death, to plead for my mother's life, the Queen Bee in the song, little did I know that although my mother would survive and that death did pass her by it would be the last time I saw my brother when I went back to stand by my mother's bedside. So life/death has it's own rhythm and it's own rhyme. The Beekeeper really acts as a Shaman, similar to the Medicine Man in the Native American tradition. We have the Beekeeper in the Celtic tradition"
Tori Amos - MSN Chat 2/22/05
I understand now, more than before, now that the proverbial wolf is finally right outside my door, just how much the soul can ache to travel to the keepers. How great the longing is to offer every exchange, including one's own life, to spare the loss of one so beloved.
This is my bargaining stage. This is me asking for time to stand still, to wait, to slow down. This is me not ready. This is my rage at life's cycle, despite a long-term respect of nature borne of my personal beliefs, storming the castle gates and insisting I will not relinquish my King.