put your life to music

"what came first, the music or the misery? people worry about kids playing with guns or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, LITERALLY thousands, of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. did i i listen to pop music because i was miserable? or was i miserable because i listened to pop music? " -john cusack in high fidelity

alright now i'll be the first person to admit that i get some sort of strange comfort from sad music -- it's almost like i'm thinking "wow, you just read my mind and put it into better words than i could have ever put it into." but movie makes a point. it's interesting to turn it around and consider the possibility that you may have self-diagnosed yourself with all of these problems because you heard them in a song, a movie, what have you. i mean if you really think about it -- how many times do you hear one line in a song and then think "Exactly! That's me! It's like you're reading my mind." And from then on out you kind of force the rest of the words to fit. So then here you are, forcing a song to form to instances of your particular life, meanwhile identifying every self-crisis possible within your mind. It's kind of messed up to think about. Maybe not completely true--but there's some validity there.

There's truth in the fact that we're all human -- we all experience the same things, different ways and to different degrees but the same things -- love, loss, joy. Whatever. So there's something to be said about feeling a connection with a songwriter's emotions -- that it's definitely logical to identify with someone else who has felt these things but written it down somewhere for people to read. But do we take it too far? Probably more often than not. Interesting to think about.