Incomplete

For a while now there's been something missing. I've not really felt, I don't know, complete maybe? It's been hard to quantify what exactly that missing part was until 7.25pm today whilst waiting for a train to take me home.

Today, for the first time in a while I listened to my iPhone on the way to and from work; whilst walking to the station and on the trains (overland and underground) that took me into London. It might have been because I forgot to take it with them yesterday, but actually DID feel like a conscious effort to listen to music on it - something I used to do automatically like breathing. I don't know why I stopped listening but I realised today that I missed my music. And so I put it on shuffle this morning.

At the station this evening I came to terms with the fact that music was the missing piece of the puzzle. The lack of music was what was missing and I discovered it again.

All of the above might sound melodramatic but you need to appreciate how personal and important music is to me. It inspires me and I've made many great friends through a joint appreciation of music.

Somewhere along the line recently I lost touch with it. Today I got back my Mojo.

The song in question that drove it home for me was Half Life by Lacuna Coil. I love this song and the lyrics are particularly relevant for me right now:

I don't want to be just a branch of the tree
I just want to learn how to grow my own seed
My horizon so hard to be outlined
Riding all my time I'm still draining my day away

You've got a natural healing
How do you get so strong?

Who is this lord of the feeling?
How did he get so big?

So fragile this feeling to be broken in two
It's really weird to say that there in the future
We're not living all our life
It's just what I know
We're incomplete despite of a new millennium

You're hiding fate

Wonderful to say that you'll never know when the world
Is going to fall and that
Is all i know
We're incomplete despite of the new millennium

I don't want to be just a cure for a need
Here into my prison I'm searching the key
My horizon so hard to be outlined
Riding all my time I'm still draining my day away

You are an unnatural survivor
Self-abuser hurt your own
All the answers sweet seduction
Chaos keeper out of control

So special this feeling to be common like you

It's really weird to say that here in the future
We're not living all our life
It's just what I know
We're incomplete despite of a new millennium

Take off your veil I'll be your fate

Wonderful to say that you'll never know when the world
Is going to fall and that
Is all I know
We're incomplete despite of the new millennium

Passion
Music is a passion for me and I can't ever imagine a time that not being the case. In fact I struggle to understand people that don't have a similar passion about it. I love discovering new music, supporting the musicians that make it and earnestly telling my friends about them.

Shuffle?
I think one of the reasons I stopped is that I would also approach listening to my music with the intention listening to a certain band or album. When I 'didn't fancy' any of them I didn't bother listening at all. I guess you could say that I felt constrained a bit to only listen to one type of thing. What tosh. Today I hit Shuffle and listened to whatever came on. I have a very eclectic taste so suffice to say the mix varied!

But it freed me from predicting what was to come next, it made me appreciate each song individually rather than as part of a whole.

Isolation or putting the World to song?
I looked around today and over half the people on the trains were plugged into their music. How like, or unlike me are they when it comes to music. Was it just noise to them, to shut out the noise around them? Was it relaxing them? Energising them? Were they actually noticing the lyrics or just absorbing the sound? Maybe they are trying to put the world to song, or pretending to be the (passive) star in their own music video.

The fact is that we all listen to music for different reasons, we probably don't even think about it really. For me, at least, without it I was incomplete, and today I got it back.

Have a good one.