Interactive Thursday

Again, the Novelista Barista has thrown down the gauntlet to her blog-followers to interact with her and answer a random question every week as part of her Interactive Thursday.
This week:

'What is one song or album that you’ve listened to over and over again in a very rough period of your life? What is your sad song?'


Well, to answer her question I'll have to refer to two different songs:


Backwardly, my sad song. I'm one of those people who, by mixture of being a prick and a fool, has gotten myself into, and managed to fuck up (or get fucked up by) a whole load of relationships. Some of them I've almost forgotten, but others....well, not quite.

One of the ones that was important, we had a song. It was one that we played whenever we were hanging out in my flat, and it set the mood really well, as well as really helping me to relax (which I often can't really do due to my silly brain) and keeping us company when we had those great comfortable silences. It was the wonderful 'Comfortably Numb', by Pink Floyd. The version that I played was the 'Live in Berlin' recording with Van Morrison as guest vocalist.



But we broke up, and it hurt. I did the whole after-split mourning period with this song on repeat in the background, watching the complete docu-series 'The World At War' (to harness the 'rage' side of the break-up by watching the entirety of the War with Laurence Olivier's narration) and quaffing Apple Schnapps like it was going out of fashion.

NB: That's a really good way to break up and I got the idea from Charlie Brooker. The apple schnapps ideas is my own. It works, but hurts.


So when I feel really sad now, one of the first songs that I'll go to is this masterpiece.

But this pales in comparison to the 'Rough Time' song.



The song that I have listened to during rough patches, and which I listen to as often as I feel I can is 'The Court of the Crimson King' by the late '70s/early '80s prog-rock band King Crimson. The first time I truly appreciated this song was when I was living in the United States in the wee small town of Lexington, Virginia. I had returned home, slightly baked, to my little apartment when a FRICKING MASSIVE thunderstorm came out of nowhere and rent the night in two. The lights for some reason went, and I had to unplug all the electrical items in the room.

Luckily, my laptop was fully alive, so I was able to sit and listen to music whilst doing some writing, illuminated only by the glow of the screen. My back had been killing me for days so, in my altered state, I lay flat on the floor, when this wonderful song came on. My head swirling with thoughts and ideas for the stories which I had been working on, raced as the neurons stonedly dealt with what I had been working on. The lightening got really close to the house, and as I lay, humming along to myself, a massive sensation of euphoria overtook me, mixed with a great feeling of calm, a feeling which I very rarely experience. My mind was still racing, but not in the usual grey-hair way. Everything made sense, and everything was good. The song was almost perfect.

The theatrical nature of it; with its epic choruses, three-act dramatics, mystical lyrics and its underlying sense of reflection made me extremely happy. It was like someone had flicked on a lightswitch in my head, and the joint feelings of world-weary tragedy and hope that the song inspired really took a hold of me. It was one of the greatest ten minutes of my life, sad as that sounds.

Since then, if I've been going through a really rough patch, and nothing really seems to make sense, I just lie on the floor, put on my studio headphones and crank up the volume...





Here ya go Jen, I hope you enjoy these songs, and thanks again for a great Interactive Thursday question.

Con
:)