This is a topsy-turvy world we live in; one where right is left, and down is up, and the only thing for certain is uncertainty. I take it back, there are two certain things in this world – uncertainty, and the certainty that a single note from a particular song will send a person on a journey they thought they only had to live once. You know what I’m talking about. Like the moment the opening chords of “Crash” come on, you’re no longer driving your car, but instead you’re being grabbed by the wrists and thrown against the wall – crash, indeed. Or like hearing that one song you forgot existed because it was kind of a one-hit-wonder, and suddenly you’re flying down a winding road in the dark, crying so hard you can’t even see, because you just learned that the person you most trusted has decided to help the person who violated your innocence, and all you want to do is drive off the cliff.
Sure, some songs lend themselves to those other, happier moments, like dancing in the rain after the MB20 concert with your best friend while your crush watches you with sweet amusement, and then joins in. Or the achingly beautiful memory of your first real kiss every time “Just Like Heaven” surfs soundwaves to your brain. The memories of those songs, however, are further and fewer than the ones that rip through our bodies like a harpoon leaving a whale to bleed long after it’s struck.
I had these thoughts last night while driving, being in parts of CO that don’t illicit real memories, but for some reason breathed a sense of nostalgia into my lungs. It’s like every experience is sound tracked, and each corresponding memory has replaced a piece of my broken heart; haphazardly stitched together with rusted wire. How long until my heart is no longer a muscle pumping blood to keep me alive, but instead a fragile artifact encased in the resin stained glass shell of my withering body? Am I becoming the walking embodiment of what is a museum for my soul? Will I stop being human? Or, is it those visceral memories that keep me human by reminding me that emotions and memories are a part of growth?
To be honest, that all sounds so cliché and perfectly convenient for the heartbreaking raw emotion that is actually felt, lived through, relived, and brutally destroys the spirit. Memories that are so encompassing that they evoke physiological reactions can’t just exist as reminders of our history. I refuse to believe that they’re there just to teach us to be strong, or to show us how strong we’ve been. Are they perfectly timed when our egos are on the verge of losing control? Like a slap in the face to remind you that you aren’t perfect? That your feet are meant to tread earth and not to walk on water or air? If we were meant to be that high, we would have been graced with wings.
Yes, I believe that’s it, but I wonder if the message has to be so damn painful every time. I’ve also wondered who is more prone to experience the desolation that comes from the perfectly orchestrated soundtrack of their life.
Is it because I have a more creative mind than pragmatic one that I’m so easily affected by nostalgia – even if it’s false? Is it because I see music, and I hear color, and I feel sound that every part of my being is shaken when just one element is just slightly askew? What causes the pendulum to swing so violently from one side to the next? This isn’t the life I would have crafted for myself if I had all the control.
Control.
Control…
Control?
Maybe that is the Mellon Collie OR the Infinite Sadness – control and how humans don’t actually have it, ever. We search for it, we fight for it, we believe it matters, we trust some version of it (structure), but how does it actually service anyone. When I’ve had control of myself, I’ve felt liberated, happy, but when the control shifts to either that of me over another or another over me, or FUCK! a song over my memories, I’ve felt ugly and chained, and mostly destroyed. I’m told that how we choose to react to things is what gives us the control over ourselves, but is that true? Hearing that one song tonight certainly didn’t make me feel like I could, in any way, regain the control of my emotions or my memories. I was immediately cast back to a dark and uninviting place; a place I would never choose to revisit on my own accord. Could I change how I reacted to it? Certainly, one would think so, but I’ll say from experience that it’s not as easy as it sounds.
Control.
That’s what this is all about. My thoughts driving last night to my thoughts writing tonight – they’re all embedded in or shrouded by lost control that could never and will never be lassoed and tamed. What does any of it even matter? Maybe it doesn’t matter at all, but as of late it has taken precedence in my mind – in my life. Maybe it’s because I’m really tired of those brief interludes that are so seemingly insignificant to most people being so devastating to me. Maybe it’s because I’m tired of living in a moment that can be stolen by a memory from the past. I feel as though I’ll be trapped in solitary confinement for the rest of my life with only padded walls to offer me any kind of cushion. Invisible chains stay locked around my wrists and ankles – keeping me grounded, yes, but also preventing me from ever stitching pieces of my heart back into place with invisible thread instead of rusted wire tethering me to memories I wish would disappear.
In the grand scheme of things, none of it matters. We’re all going to die someday, and it won’t be relevant who had control, when. But I suppose I’m concerned with what happens between now and then when now is so hard to breathe. I’ve had that suffocating feeling before, hands gripped tightly – and I have it still at the hands of all those memories locked in lyrics wrapped in chords where left goes right and up looks down.
Until Next Time,
Courtney Chivon
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