#and c) I felt extra validated in how I wrote like a stranger after reading this hehehe

[patrice-bergerons]

I have too many feelings about this.

[carbonsequestrian]

man i dont even know if i should share this because it’s super weird/ poorly written/ doesn’t make any sense but i feel like i keep too much too myself so here is a block of text i wrote and didn’t edit and if you read it, i love you.

Well, id like to kick off my music blogging career with a piece about a song that has continued to inspire me since the moment I heard it about 5 years ago. Something about the song awakens this dragon in me… or rather, something about the song awakens a knight that is about to go and slay a dragon, and that feeling crashes into every fiber of my being resulting in me feeling fucking powerful. Idk what the secret is. I wish I had found this sound when  I did a song analysis project for my freshman writing seminar back in college. (I chose Sublime’s Santeria for that project… and it was a shit show. Believe it or not, trying to write 10 pages about a song that doesn’t inspire every fiber of your being is insanely difficult. Lesson – if you have to write a lot, write about something you fucking love and admire.)

 The song is Don’t Waste Time Doing Things You Hate by And So I Watch You From Afar of their self titled 2009 release. I think it’s their debut album. Anyway, the band makes instrumental rock music. Stuff that superheroes and supervillains alike would use as a theme song. I discovered them from Worldhaspostrock on youtube, so check them out.

 Of course, now that im sitting down to write about the song I cannot think of any words to say about it. Lovely how that happens. Especially after bragging about how easy it is to write about something you love. HA>

If you’ve ever done something you hate, you sure know how that feels. Part of you feels trapped -momma didn’t raise no quitter – and another part of you is too busy daydreaming about what you’d rather be doing to formulate a plot to get you there. Feeling stuck doing something you hate is exactly how I felt when I discovered this song. I chose my major at college based on what a guy who I’d met over the internet was studying, he called me pretty and would send me ‘good morning’/ ‘sweet dreams’ texts, so we were obviously super serious. And I was going to study the same thing as him and we would conquer the world together, duh. Lo and behold, I hated my major. And because I hated my major, I didn’t really fit in with any of the people I met through my major. There was one chick who I liked because she hated it too, but we were very different people. I did sports in college instead of joining a music group (being in an acapella group was a last minute goal of mine) because A. everyone in my family was super sporty B. no one in my family thought very highly of music and C. I was fucking terrified of it. Every bit of it sends anxiety chills down my spine and up my toes. Singing in front of people in a room? Singing with people? Having people rely on you to do your thing correctly in order to achieve a desired result? Fuck that’s anxiety inducing. And let me make this clear, I don’t have stage fright. But I do have Perfectionist Block (a totally real issue, created by me, ill discuss it further in another post) which makes me extremely hard on myself.

 So anyway, to paint the picture – 20 year old me is in the library for the 50th hour that week (no kidding, I went to Cornell, and seriously spent 6-10 hours a day in the library studying during regular term. Finals/ testing weeks, it’d double) looking for upbeat instrumental music that could make me feel like a bad ass and I find this band. The first song I found by them was The Voiceless, off the same album. That song fucking slaps. I must’ve listened to it 30 times before saying “hey, why don’t I check out their other stuff?” and thus gave this album a listen. I was so stressed that week, so tired, felt so lost and alone. I hated every fucking minute of my life but I was pushing through it because I wanted to make my mom proud. Every morning I would angrily get ready for class, pissed off that elitism and this desperate urge to prove oneself through menial shit such as ‘ivy league’ degrees would push someone to find the line of their breaking point and balance on it. All for what? If I died tomorrow, who could speak of who I am? At cornell, I was a cornell student. That was it. By being there, I wasn’t anything of myself anymore. I wasn’t strong, I wasn’t funny, I wasn’t good with animals, I wasn’t a hard-worker, I wasn’t smart – though, those last traits were implied – I simply became a product of an institution. One that I loved, don’t get me wrong. I had been looking for reassurance/ acceptance/ approval my entire life, and that letter that I got from a world renowned school was it – so I thought. But then I got there and my imposter syndrome went wild. I wasn’t truly smart, or good at learning. In fact, high school had been so easy for me that I was able to scrape by with great grades without ever working on schoolwork outside of school (I’d do my work during lunch, when I would eat in the chorus room/ my English teacher’s room since I had no friends.) at school, I thought I’d made friends, but they ditched me when I needed them most. In retrospect, I should’ve been more forgiving – no one’s perfect -  but ill blame my poor socialization through high school here. I saw kids who worked their asses off day and night. A 16 year old math prodigy lived in my hall. And I had nothing to show for my intelligence outside of the fact I was able to take enough HS classes in middle school that I’d manage to have 4 hours of school my senior year (typically, that time would be so that kids could take extra APs. But I said fuck that.)

 Truth is,  I was so insecure and unsure of myself that being thrown into the lava pit that is college – any college, not just an ivy league – was emotionally and mentally overwhelming. I found myself getting drunk to the point of almost dying most nights. Every time with strangers. I’d often go to the bridges, where so many had leapt to their deaths before, and ponder if that’s where I belonged. Crashing amongst the rocks and water in the gorges. Man, I was fucking depressed. And a ball of anxiety. I had no real identity, you’d ask me what I liked or what I wanted from my life and I’d have no real answer. My answer would vary based on what youtube videos I had been watching that week. I was so scared of being judged.

 Point is, I found nothing that I felt a connection to. Not my major. Not my peers. Occasionally my surroundings, but typically only in the morbid, I’d like to throw myself off this sort of way. Life is so much more complex than those things, and truth is, ill never really be able to explain away all of the different shit in my life that was bringing me down. Making me feel worthless. Dumb. Like I didn’t belong. And the first thing that I felt like understood this, was this song. Even writing that out I feel like it confirms my worst fears, that I am worthless/ delusional/ crazy/ not even a real person. How does one go through 20 years of life and can only feel connected to a pile of noises that a stranger has made and recorded? Wavelengths generated by someone else’s finger tips never felt so good. They resonated through my brain and spoke to my soul. It was like I was being sucked into a black hole and obliterated to nothing. And that was what I needed, because I was able to look at who I was and take a chance to rebuild. To change.

 With no one to talk to, no one who understood me, and no real goals or aspirations in my life/ being too crippled by fear to even take a chance to achieve my goals/ aspirations in life, I darted in the complete opposite direction. Left that ‘dream school’ for a state school 2000 miles away. I still waste plenty of time doing things I hate, but every day I try to do my best to find the things I love. It’s been a long hard road, and I am so unsure of myself. I realize I’ll never have the validation I seek, at least not externally. Still, going to cornell is my greatest achievement and those close to me hold a grudge that I left without fulfilling my diploma. And looking back, I could’ve done it. Taken some time off, sought a therapist outside of the free service offered, opened up to some of the people I had met. Hindsight is 2020. And im here now.

 This song means the world to me. The suspense of the guitar plucking in the intro is an emotion I was swallowed in. the anger and noise of the guitars from 1:11-1:30 was how I felt every morning when I looked at the day ahead. The desperation of the guitars at 2min how I looked at the people around me, who appeared to have their shit all together. Their heads above the water. Looking at me drowning below the surface. But I had a smile on my face, so I must have been fine. Then the clarity that comes at 3mins. The music starts to feel like it’s getting itself together. 3:35-4:15, when big changes happen. And the la la lalalalalas. That’s how I was, just “la de da-ing” my way through life, not really thinking about what I was going to take from this world and my short time getting to experience it. The song gets progressively happier, and calmer, as I hope my own life will be, though I’m still in my 3min phase when it feels like it’s starting to get itself together.

 Ill always hold onto the hard times I went through at school. And ill wish everyday for a time machine, so I could go back in time and tell 18 year old me to just chill and ‘discover yourself, man’ before going to a place that has so much potential. Because the truth is, I was too insecure to be successful at such an institution. I still think I’m too insecure. But at least now I know, and I’m not living under this idea that because I got into a good school I am a good person and good things will come to me.