When I listen
Sunday, Aug. 11, 2002 00:24

When I listen to music, I follow along. Unless it's simply setting a backdrop, then I'm right along with it, hearing every note, putting my inner voice into it. If I know the words to a song, it is incredibly hard for me to not sing along. People at work make fun of me for this. But it's true. The only time I don't sing along with songs that I know is if I feel incredibly uncomfortable in my surroundings, it's something I truly truly want to just listen to and savor (and that usually takes will-power) or if I don't really feel good, and I just don't have it in me.

"Can you still feel the butterflies?"

It was Jimmy Eat World that got me onto this topic. I've been listening with a great deal of emotion and admiration for the past two days. But the song "Crush" just came on and I almost couldn't bear to listen to the whole thing. I like the song, but I'm wearing headphones (which intensifies the extent to which the music truly enters me), and it's very very strained. As I was listening, and reproducing the song inside my head (This is really hard for me to explain), I couldn't handle it. It was so painful to me to muster the tension to reproduce the sound in the singer's voice. It's the kind of tension in singing that makes me feel like I am contracting my entire head, like I'm taking everything and constricting it, and giving myself this massive headache. Singing like that just doesn't do it for me. Unfortunately.

I really do this, most of the time. It's like singing along, but only inside.

I assume this is why music has such an enormous effect on me. The production of sounds, and the fact that I, too, know how to produce them. (the small amount of musician in me, I like to tell myself). And the emotion, the beat, the way that the music comes together, and how I can hear it and all the harmony and complexity, and never begin to share it with anyone, since my outlets are quite limited.

This is why I must, someday, become a better pianist. And singer.

Oh, what I wouldn't give to be a good singer. *sigh* Singing is my soul, my breath. There's little that can compare for me.

And the way I picture music too. It's nothing describable. It's music. It doesn't look like anything else to me. There are colors. Right now I'm listening to "Goodbye Sky Harbor" (by Jimmy Eat World) and it's dark green and blue. But I can't really give you the rest of it.

But my brain follows it...jumping along in these patterns, with little moans of vocals mixed into the spaces. This song doesn't stress me out so much. This one, I can handle.