What is it about soppy music that makes me want to kill things? Slowly. Like bunnies. And I’m a pacifistic vegetarian.
I’m talking bad love ballads. When I hear that kind of music, my teeth clench, my eyebrows knit together in a dark thundercloud of rage, and I feel the need to start thumping anything in my reach. I feel my heart rate rise, my muscles tense, my whole body prepare for war. It’s an auto-response over which I seem to have absolutely no control.
Whitney, Mariah, Celine all make me convulse. Lionel Ritchie, Chris de Burgh and Roy Orbison will have me clawing at the walls. I can’t help it. Someone else might get the same response to death metal, or classical music, or anything with a cowbell in it, but why do I go ape over such benign, placid music, as the good old fashioned love ballad? Why do I get angry at a form of music that seems to calm most people?
I suspect it is an old trigger from childhood, perhaps a blocked memory where something god-awful happened to me accompanied by the woeful warblings of “Endless Love” or “Unchained Melody”, or worse, “Tonight I Celebrate my Love”. Such is the power of music that even though I say this flippantly, it’s a totally feasible possibility. Music can trigger memories, just like smells.
Music can either soothe you, or send you insane. Today it’s used as a weapon and a torture device. Here’s an interesting article from 2003: Sesame Street Breaks Iraqi POWs
“Uncooperative prisoners are being exposed for prolonged periods to tracks by rock group Metallica and music from children’s TV programmes Sesame Street and Barney in the hope of making them talk.”
Well. Perhaps I shouldn’t have leaked my musical weakness. Now it can be used against me…
5 comments:
Ahh, yes... it's not uncommon to have repressed memories involving Chris de Burgh. Your psyche will naturally want to block out such an intense trauma like "Lady in Red"
"it’s used as a weapon and a torture device"
I almost couldn't read that part in A Clockwork Orange. I couldn't imagine to have something like my favourite music ruined. Actually having a book ruined might be worse for me...
This is the weirdest thing. My post that my friend is editing is about the power of sound. You and I channelling each other!
ah yes, AL, lady in red. put that song on around me and you'll see a red lady...
@Cassie - yes i was thinking about that part in clockwork orange while i was writing this! i really want to delve more into the power of music. there's definitely more to it than meets the eye.
@Smoph - synchronicity! can't wait to read it!
A red lady?
I'm sure that you're Once, Twice, Three times a lady even but thinking of you becoming red like that would Kill me softly.
Because, Oh, Pretty Woman, You are so beautiful... to me. And, though you become angered Time after Time, Whatever it takes and whatever heartbreaks - I can't stop loving you.
Whether I'm With or without you, Time goes by... so slowly. And yet time can do so much, don't you think?
After all, You'd think that people would have had enough of silly love songs. But I look around me and I see it isn't so.
Whatever it takes, if you here those songs and Feel like you can't go on, if you feel like all hope is gone then just Reach out. And we'll be there for you, when the rain starts to fall.
'cause we know that you're there for us too.
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