punky dares some muzik muzings

Disclaimer: I'm not a music-y person :P
I do this thing quite often; maybe it's to do with the whole Letting Go thing: When I'm driving and there's an mp3 full of songs dowloaded by other people and hence, full of some songs that I like, some I don't, some I just luuurve during a particular mood/ certain phase/ on a certain day etc, I deliberately don't press the next/previous buttons. Usually, what happens with mp3s is that is that I end up memorising numbers for the songs I love the most, and keep forwarding and/or repeating them, till I reach that saturation point where I've stopped lingering on my favourite lyrics, or longing to hear them again as soon as they've been sung (sometimes can't even wait till the song ends and I can repeat it!). Now I just pretend that I don't have an option. So I have to let all the songs play, listen to them coz I just have to submit to the lack of freewill. This way I find new favourites, and even get to start liking some songs I never liked in the first place or never noticed earlier because they weren't so apt in that phase of my life.

Warning: Digression. Skip if want to stick to music musings.
I've always been the idiotic types when it comes to these things. I find something I love, and then just go into overdrive! Like, I re-issued Roald Dahls and Blyton's Faraway Tree for years in junior and middle school library (must've been a record of sorts), which is why I never got down to reading anything of the Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Agatha Christie, hell even Mills and Boons kind (also because my whole class was converging on the shelves with these books, and in the spirit of oh-me-not-herd-mentality I thought my selection of BFG and Faraway Tree were so classic and just so erudite). In fact, my first Famous Five was read two months ago, for a book review in Parenting, and had me quite appalled at what ALL I missed! And all this while I'd been proud of how at such a tender age I just gauged that crucial moment - when it'd be my turn in the library queue to hand back that awesome book that made me so happy - and pipe up, 'Re-issue please' and take the book home again (sometimes only to read select pages once in a while, or just keep it in my bag as a sort of comfort thing!). Confession time: I am absolutely weird.

So, burned a new mp3 that I'd arranged alphabetically. Whatta stupid idea, coz I've got 8 DMB songs back-to-back and am sniffin' up my old addiction again. With the added advantage of not having to move even a finger to press the rewind/forward button! But, it's kinda funny too, coz u know how listening to same songs in your room and your car can be like listening to two different songs? This mp3 plays in office all the time. But in that closed space of the car, windows rolled up, alone, with no comp screen to focus on - yes, the road, but I try not to focus too much on that, else I fuck up. I'm a natural; it spoils my rhythm, ya see :) - songs sound so different, so zoomed in, like the guy's sidled up to you and is singing right into your ear drums or something. Creepy, at times. So since Dave has been crooning in my ears for a bit now, I'm beginning to wonder why I like his songs so much. He doesn't have a great great voice like all smooth and strong and beautiful, like say, a Chris Isaak. Like if these songs were a fictional character's monologues, I'd imagine him as an older guy, like late 30's (sorry, I'm still little enuf to call that old), not attractive, but pretty much knows what he's about. Laidback, like, so drunk and post coital. That, I like. Saying all the right words, with all the right accents and pauses and lingering on the irony bits (which are just too many) for just the right duration, all the right profundities being evoked - all so sexy and beautiful - but what I love the most is that this guy (not Dave, I mean, the character of the guy who's singing the songs) is that he's just so wasted (ya, substance abuse and otherwise). A guy who is all those things women long for - he feels everything so deeply, so feelingly, so intensely and yet in such a lay-back-let's-go-with-the-flow way, gets all those complexities and then renders them so well - and he knows it. But just the sheer burden of all this 'being' leaves him totally wasted. He knows he's good, and so he gets the chicks and never needs to look at whatta jerk the rest of him can be. And he's a little vain - like he's so impressed with his own ability to be all that feelingly stuff that he's just abandoned the rest of himself to it. Like he'll just spend hours sitting there in a corner, strumming and singing not because he wants to sing to someone, but just because he's totally in love with the way he does it. He's just so head over heels in love with himself and all his tormenting inner conflicts (I find sometimes its easy to be myself/Sometimes I find better to be somebody else) that he doesn't need to love a woman at all. Like he'll croon Save me, save me/ Stranger, if you please/ Or am I too far gone/ To get back home, but he really doesn't want you to. But then, everybody gets sick of wanking away, so sex he must. But first, he'll mindfuck. Like in Crash what he's really longing for is just some raunchy SnM, but he'll do this whole older-man-wanting-to-live-out-his-teenage-fantasy-wet-dream thing, so the girl would just have to oblige coz this must be the first time she's the bloody subject of the dreams a guy's had before he met her. Everybody wants to be a subject of someone's wet dream, but to be one of a wet dream of a wet dream is quite something. And this way, Dave also gets away with extremely corny lines (Hike up your skirt a little more/And show the world to me) coz hey, that's what a fifteen-year-old would write, right? But I'd say Say Goodbye is just classic. I mean, whatta fantastic idea; the guy's a charming asshole (Run away here with me/On an evening oh just wait and see/But tomorrow go back to your man/I'm back to my world/And we're back to being friends) coz he's got the chick to believe that while her inner jerk-radar tells her she's been told these words by other male assholes, when he says it, it just goes so much deeper. Good for Dave (the character, pliz, no defamation suits), coz she can't turn around tomorrow and say 'I want to be lovers today too', coz he told her today that they'll be friends tomorrow coz he's gotta be another chick's lover tomorrow so he can be her friend day after tomorrow. And so on.

Not to say I hate DMB now! Of course, I find myself in the stupid girl's shoes all the time (and I would've done the lovers tonight and crash things with or without the above-mentioned perspective if I ever found myself face to face with this character). I enjoy the music a lot more now. It's just a lot more fun to listen to songs with all these stories cooking up in your head alongside, no? Or am I just going to be forever cursed for ruining your DMB experience? It's called intahprahtation, and it's been a while since I did some in Eng Lit class. If you don't like it, go do your own thing on your own blog. Okay? Okay.

Come to think of it, he sounds a little like Byron, doesn't he? Except he's even smarter. He's singing his poetry out. Doubles the effect on chicks :) Or maybe this just has to do with my current phase in life. Like all music does :)