I don't even know why it is, but for some reason, I find this song so indescribably beautiful. It's nothing much in the grand scheme of things, really it's not, just four minutes or so of harmony about nothing really important but it's just so right anyway...
... and it's beautiful, it really is, from beginning to end, but right in the middle there's this one part where the tenor hits this high note and the others set up this gentle rhythm beneath it and I swear my mind just expands, every single little blocked pathway opens and everything starts to work, and words pour from my fingers and idea flow from my brain and my eyes open wide as it hits like a rush of... well, not like adrenalin, more like adrenalin's sweeter younger sister that loves me dearly...
And all the rest of the song is a gentle and lovely reminder of that one transcendent moment, so I just put the mp3 on infinite loop and listen to it over and over and over again, for over fourteen hours since I first downloaded the song, and all I want to do is say thank you, thank you, thank you for introducing this to me, even though I'm sure you're getting tired of hearing that.
And maybe my neck hurts and my thigh hurts but I don't care, don't care at all, because the simple human voices of the song have woken the celestial choir that lives in my mind, and they sing along, and I am beatified, I am awakened, I am enlightened. In no way that anyone else would recognize but me, and doesn't that just make it sweeter?
I want to sing along, to raise my own shaky unpleasant tenor in harmony, to somehow become a part of that song, and sometimes I do; and even though my voice is so little compared to the song and the choir, even that doesn't distract me, because I am lost, I am lost in the song, and I have, for the moment, become part of it. I'll hit that transcendent note and be carried along, to a place in my mind where I can find what I'm missing. And maybe, maybe if I'm very lucky, I can bring it back with me; but even if I can't, at least I can visit.
Pure joy flowing from the speakers of my computer. How lovely is that?
And I listen to the song, letting it bathe me like something softer than water and sweeter than air, surrounded by my friends, who either love me or pretend that they love me so well that it really makes no difference, not right now anyway.
Finally, grudgingly, I must go to bed, so I turn off the mp3, and it is this quality of the song that endears it to me even more: it makes even the silence beautiful, because that high note still echoes in my brain and washes down my spine, making me float when I walk. The celestial choir sings on, alone now, reminding me that there was beauty in my life tonight.
I float up the stairs and turn off the light, and on the landing of the topmost floor I stop, because it's raining, rivers of rain racing and running on the roof. I can hear the wind blowing the rain gently, I can hear the cars swishing by on their way to work, and the rain taps lightly above my head like an old friend waiting to be let in, and all I can do is turn my head to the ceiling and smile, smile as wide as I can because if I were to cry out my joy right this moment I might startle the choir and their accompaniment.
And I stand there, letting myself be bathed in waves of pure contentment. If there is a divine, maybe I've touched it now. I feel transcendent. I feel joy.
All that from a simple little mp3. And perhaps I'm the only person who hears what I hear in that song. I'm ashamed to tell you which song it was. What if you didn't find in it what I found? What if you didn't like it at all?
But right now, that's all right. To each their own joy. This is mine.
Finally I have to move. I can't stand out here all night, and anyway the rain is dying down. And I get into bed, and my mind speaks the following against the gentle singing of the choir:
For all the arguments there are about the purpose of the arts, right now I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that
the arts exist to bring us Joy, and to help us find Joy in the rest of our lives.
Normally that's not quite what I believe, but right now I've never been so certain of anything in my life.
And I'll miss that certainty when it's gone.
Pieces.
Mooncalf
Replies: add your comment: currently 5 comments
*nods* It would satisfy our curiosity to know, but in the end I think the feeling is what's important. It's individual to each person what will awake it, but it's a comparable state anyway. (Hm, mine is "One" by U2. Sigh...)
Posted by StB @ 11/30/2001 05:46 AM EST
...remind me to throw music at you more often. *smooch*
Posted by D @ 11/30/2001 10:09 PM EST
Um. Whatever that was, throw it at me too. I could use a religious experience along the lines of that.
..and hey, if I don't like it, I'll just have to tell you a few of the things that I secretly listen to when no one else is around. o.o
Posted by Ed @ 12/01/2001 08:27 AM EST
Well, uh, after several requests:
The song is called 'Insomniac', by the Virginia Gentlemen. I'm not going to upload the mp3, because I don't want my bandwidth to diiiiie, but maybe I can convince someone else to share.
It's a lovely song by any standards, although I sincerely doubt anyone else will find it quite as enthralling as I do. For me, it's like aural Ecstasy. Mmmmmm.
If you listen to it and you hate it? Don't tell me. I don't wanna know.
Posted by Mooncalf @ 12/02/2001 11:57 PM EST
I listened to it... and liked it... and then went, 'DUDE! WONDERWALL!' and went on a happy little nostalgia trip. Whee.
Posted by Ed @ 12/03/2001 07:55 PM EST
