my life, the RPG

Fuck sakes, I am so dramatic. Of COURSE every problem I encounter is huge-scale, the worst of the worst, like my life is a fucken RPG or something. Like this big evil dude living in some crazy technoworld is gonna take over the planet, and I, coming from a quaint little village where everyone exists in peace with nature, must stop this mad apocalypse.

Really though, my problems always feel so bloody dire. I wonder why. I wonder why everything always boils down to the eternal battle between good vs. evil. Hah. As if life is so black-and-white. As if.

So what have I been doing with myself lately? Well I had a really productive tuesday, I somehow managed to write a song that has been nothing but turmoil to me for the last long time. This song, I swear. It's like I couldn't get to the bottom of it. Every time I thought I had figured out the themes and feelings, what the song really said, two days later I would come up with a different idea and the first would seem incredibly shallow and stupid. And so on, etc.

I've come to the conclusion that this song is bottomless. And by digging into it, I had lost the truth of it.

Alas, it is a bit poppy. But this was also another realization - why do I write music in the first place? It's beyond venting and expressing myself. I want to connect with people. And who do I want to connect with? People in the pop world (and others, of course, how dare I exclude every other goddamn category), because these are the people who are destroying music, by buying britney spears and jennifer lopez (names unworthy of capitalization) and all this kind of shit. This is what the media wants to sell them, for they will get rich and live a wonderful life in a mansion on a beach shore with 500000 goddamn rooms and a personal maid for every fucken one of them, they want this pig-life, and so they have devised a good plan to attain this, the pop industry, where people like jessica simpson are no more than shiny pawns for their grand scheme. And the people eat it up. Why? The songs are pretty, glossy, and hit the soap-opera heart of most soft-brained kids (and adults).

I used to eat this shit up, until I was about 14 or 15, until I grew a brain and some taste. I bought britney's first album, I loved the backstreet boys, I bought those stupid little magazines with pin-ups of the day's cutest celebs, and I stuck them on my walls. And these are the people...the people that deserve better. It's like mcdonalds and all these junk companies targeting little kids, knowing full-well how impressionable they are, but alas, not giving a fuck, and then suddenly you've got this crazy obesity epidemic, where, what was the figure, 1/3 american kids will be obese. Yeah, it's like that.

There IS good pop out there. Wait - what is the point of music, anyway, why does it exist? This answer varies depending on the perspective, so I'll put in my two cents here. Music, to me, is an expression of feeling, like a painting. Feelings aren't explainable, they can't be reasoned...Ask me what it felt like when I took out the garbage on that beautiful spring evening, the sun barely in the sky, and I'd tell you that it hit me like a brick wall, like a crazy wave of melancholy. But that isn't enough. You ask, what does melancholy feel like? Melancholy feels like.......it's like......(and then I'd compare it to an experience, to try and make sense of it) ...like when I realized me and my love wouldn't last forever, it just couldn't be, but I was still with him and it was okay....like...happy-sad...what's happy? what's sad? Happy is spring puddles and blue skies and and love, and love. And this goes on. I could write a book on a feeling. And I wouldn't be able to say it right....and it's perspective. To someone else, 'happy' might bring up thoughts of campfires, or the smell of pine needles on a breezy day, or Buddha in a spaceship with kittens.

Anyway, what I'm saying here is that music delves into this inexplainable realm of feeling. This whole crazy soul thing. It can be a there-there pat on the back, an "I understand you, I know how you feel." Pop music is ALWAYS going on about love, so much that the meaning of the word has become skewed and near-meaningless, "I love you baby, ooo ooo I love you, won't you be mine forever and ever (I want to fuck your brains out)", "I love you so much but it cannot be (that man down the street is checking me out)", wait, I'm noticing a theme, the love expressed in pop music is lust, is infatuation, is temporary. Another theme I've noticed lately (I like turning on the radio occasionally, I like to know what's going on) is the whole, "man, check me out, I'm so hot and independant, look at me, I'm unique and I'm doing my own thing, aren't I so awesome." Which is, you know, good, it's good to know who you are and like it...but in this context it's a tad....hypocritical, because isn't the cool new trend to be "oh-so-free and independant"? So basically, millions of people are conforming to this trend, which is....well I feel I cannot explain it properly. You figure yourself out because you need to, not because it's cool....and when it's cool, you're not even doing it right...it's like the whole "love" in pop songs...it's not real love, it's ruining the good name of love.

Arg. This is why I cannot explain myself very well. My feelings get too tangled in this.

ANYWAY. Kids buy into this crap because....can they relate to it? Or is it simply the catchy rhythms and tunes? (Some of these songs get jammed in your head even after one listening)...if there was quality pop, pop that was sincere, not built on money and the false concept of beauty, pop that was truly built on REAL feelings...Not to say there isn't pop like this. U2 has gotta be my favorite band. Upon hearing them, I transformed as a person, it opened something up in me...I just connected with it, like really, truly connected, and then all of a sudden I started seeing this 'true' music everywhere, and I could see what I was living inside because I got out of it, this false soap opera way of things became so clear.

Isn't that the kind of writer I am? Pop is in my fucking blood. My parents were 80's kids, I loved that stuff as a young 'un, and though it's hard to admit, I still do. My dad was a lover of dance and techno, but then again, he was a DJ. Mainly he got out of it because the sad turn music took. He said that in the 80's, the music was fun, it was good pop, people danced and had a wonderful time, but by the late 90's it had turned crap, people danced to be skanky, the music meant nothing.

I started writing music in grade six or so. And it was stupid poppy shit, one of the titles I can remember is "more than a million you", lame, I know, I know. I had entire notebooks dedicated to this shit. I was writing song after song whenever the whim came, there must be 100 from that time. All crap, of course, except for one, which is quite magical, it's called "midnight song" and at that point I doubt I ever stayed up that late, it's interesting, the feelings I expressed in it were feelings I had never felt, but are strangely applicable at this point in my life. I've edited it, of course. But lots of the lyrics in it remain unchanged. That's another thing. I've noticed something weird in my writings. On many occasions, something I write doesn't apply at all at the time...maybe I think it does, but it doesn't...and then a year later, it will make perfect sense to me...

I keep straying from the point. In about grade 11, before him, when I was oh-so-tragic (just another angsty teenager), I wrote a lot of music again, still poppy, but a little more, well, real. Horribly whiny and depressed at points, but still real. Even nowadays, when I chill on my piano, it's got the pop feel. I've expanded my horizons but this pop sound is my sound. And the song I wrote on tuesday sort of showed me that. I've got to be true to myself. What U2 did for me, that's what I want to do for others (wistful thinking). Open them up. Expose them to a whole new way.

(Also, most of my songs tend to stray to the minor/sad side of things...happy songs don't come easy)

I'm really feeling good about this, I'm really feeling the passion, the dream is coming into focus again. I know what side I'm on and I know my enemy, and I know what I need to do, or die trying.

I've been going to my parent's house a lot, I'm doing some hard-core practicing. I need to give this my all. Especially with his music being the most beautiful I've ever heard. Slightly intimidating, it is. But this is the right music. To me. This music feels...it feels like..........it feels like home.

I have to try. I can't let this down. I know I can do this...

(or maybe I'm just stuck in a delusion.)

Ally