Obsession

Though I live within words, I'm always there as an outsider. I've so rarely had that moment, a one true moment of literary ecstasy. This frustrates me terribly, because I expect inspiration and life-changing events from what I read, and it doesn't play out. My life has changed in cataclysmic ways, though, and I have had those moments accompanied with music. Please enjoy one account from February 2005 that captures that. I include it here in hopes of jump-starting my soul to activate from words, to make love with what I see the way I have heard such perfect and horrible and changing chords and choruses that carried me in my occasional moments of quiet destruction.

Listening to the same songs over and over, I get that from my mom. I remember her playing “I’m Just a Gigolo” by David Lee Roth so many times that I would wake up humming the chorus. (Don’t hold the song choice against her—your moms loved that song too.) It wasn’t my favorite song, what with the strange words I didn’t understand; I was still trying to figure out what a casbah and Der Kommissar meant, let alone this “gigolo” thing. But I never minded it—I loved seeing my mom so taken with a song that it made her smile every time she played it. Maybe that’s the first time I understood music as some kind of escape.

I listen to the same songs all the time. I wore out my CD player listening to “Dig for Fire” when I spilled my confused heart onto paper at age 18, writing a letter I never intended to send. Or before cross-country races, I’d play some truly pathetic songs on repeat—I’m talking things like “Ain’t Nothin’ Gonna Break My Stride” over and over, okay? I tell you this not because I don’t get embarrassed—I assure you I am Loverboy-red as I write this—but so you trust me that you’re getting an honest piece of writing from me.

I always have honed in on certain songs and played them so many times in a row. I don’t do it because I’m trying to learn the lyrics or how to play air drums to the song, or even because I want to. I guess there’s some kind of comfort with it, boring as it is, so it just happens without me thinking about it. And while I certainly pick better songs these days, I’ve found that I revisit songs much more so now than I used to, which surprises me. It seems like a teenage thing to do, playing on repeat. Maybe it’s that I now listen to most of my music through iTunes, which given the fact I use the built-in speakers must horrify all lovers of music.

I think it’s the ease of repeating songs that has made this habit worse. I’m aware that I do this now more than I used to because of this horrible data field on the interface called “Play Count,” which lists the number of times you play each song. Where I once overlistened to anything without compunction, I must say that seeing 48 plays of “Hey Ya!” doesn’t make me feel particularly cool. To be fair to me, I can tell you that 46 of the listens were before that song started appearing on every awards show commercial in the world.

This Play Count started fascinating me, though, as I thought about not just what I listened to so much, but why. Is it the pretty sounds of The Flaming Lips' “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” that generated 78 listens, or do the words, eccentric as they are, just inspire some part of my life? What about tripe like 311’s “Amber” or Elefant’s “Misfit,” to which I’ve given 47 listens each? Does the easy stuff help me as I work on my computer? These large play counts may be less an indication of what I like and more a practical effort—these songs help me get stuff done, not so much an escape as an aid through what I’m not escaping.

Even with all of this on my mind, I’m shocked at what’s happened to me in the last month, when Interpol and Antics entered my life. I’m always a bit behind what others are doing; do you know anyone else who doesn’t have a cell phone? So, I didn’t start listening as this album came out, even though several friends had it and loved it. One friend let me borrow the CD right away, but after importing the songs, I proceeded to listen to Modest Mouse some more (92 listens of all songs to this point, and so many more for “The World At Large”—talk about a literal interpretation of “I know that starting over’s not what life is about, but my thoughts were so loud I couldn’t hear my mouth”...okay, so I’m still not particularly cool).

Then, it was just right. Interpol crashed into my world. It might have been a Tuesday or a Saturday, possibly in the day but more likely at night. Was I sad? Was I distracted? I don’t remember anything specific, not until I took the time, why I don’t know, to take in the album’s second track, “Evil.” At this point I stepped away from my life—but not to escape. I stepped away from my life to leap back into myself. If you’re honest with yourself, you know we all detach at times. But me, I was adrift, and I didn’t even realize it until I landed.

I’m a person who has listened to songs repetitively my whole life, but I have never been taken like this, not by an album, not by one song. I can’t stop listening to the album, to “Evil.” I can’t stop and I don’t want to stop. I listen at work when I’m busy, I play it in my head on the way home, I take it in at night as I close my eyes after a night on my computer, desperate to give my eyes a break, grateful to open up my blanketed insides one last time. Not so much repetitive as recursive. Or obsessive.

It’s with me so deeply right now that I may someday look back and be concerned. But now, I accept its necessity in my life and its strange relevance to what seems to be an ordinary life: mine. They talk directly to Rosemary and Sandy, but this song is me singing to…someone. Myself? You? Do I even know anymore? Can I be that honest? In a sky full of distant lights, can I reach up to grab the one that no one else sees igniting?

I must be building up to something, or maybe I’m being shown that I’m already there. The past tense world we fall into sometimes has shattered with this infinitive pulse, these dark notes and these simple truths. What does it mean to be evil? Is the world so black and white if everyone says it is, even if you know better? If those around you say something is wrong, who are we to say it is right? And how do those guitars so completely absorb and excite me, a first-time energy repeated forever?

I’ve put off writing this article for so long. Sometimes we distract ourselves when we’re afraid of what we might find. But I’m not afraid. I feel new, like I’m experiencing a first kiss, but with an adult’s ability to understand its significance, then ignore all that to taste the purity. We all know music can be an escape. But sometimes, if we let it, it brings us back to who we are. I am both contestant and audience of my own show. I am a dog, loyal to what I’m told but driven by instinct, and I am owner, taking his dog out so he can find the local news. We are all walking contradictions—we just realize it at different times. Maybe it’s just most of us. Maybe it’s just me. Those that don’t realize it: they are probably happy all of their lives.

Do I make sense to you? When deep into an obsession, we don’t always care about others, but I want you to understand who I am right now. This is my time to not sleep, to not eat, to go about my day in a daze—not to find who I am, but to let myself be found. If you don’t know me better from this, how can it end? Or do I really want you to know me this way? I’m honest with myself—that doesn’t mean I’m always brave about it. I’ve been so honest with you. Is it because I can’t be honest with myself? I will stop listening some day, when I am someone different and less complicated. But not now.

In a soul with this many complications, do you understand why I can listen one thousand times to something so intensely, beautifully, completely, and weightlessly simple?

Hey wait.
Great smile.

Yes.

This piece originally published in Some Other Magazine.