Grabbing The Electric Fence

It's kind of like knowing the ice is thin but you wanna jump on it anyways...or someone posts a sign saying "Electric Fence" but you get some twisted idea that you'd like to grab it just to see what would happen.

Tonight reminded me of the night that for no intelligent reason, I put on the rings from a past relationship just to see what they would look like on my hands after pretty much not wearing jewellery for several years. It's a memory-trip I think each one of us has been entangled in. It can go from pulling out old photo albums to driving by an apartment or house you used to share with someone. You are extraordinarily happy to be away from the scenario, so it's not a matter of wanting to dive back into the fire, but it's like a sick curiosity that sucks you into wasting minutes or hours saturating yourself in the negative and destructive emotions that go with it. You find yourself at Google or Facebook searching their names to see where they are or if they are alive. You realistically don't want to do any of these things or go to that dark place, but sadly...there you find yourself.

Well, I feel like I have graduated past alot of those self-inflicted evenings of pure torture.

Tonight was a mini journey I find myself visiting more often than not. It's much like re-reading an old diary, but it involves music. Many people understand the nostalgic feeling of throwing on a record or cd of an artist from yesteryears. There is a certain type of music you associate with old school settings...there are songs you remember from church, weddings and funerals. Everyone seems to have at least one song from a movie that will move them even if it came on the radio 50 years from now.

Tonight wasn't any of that.

Tonight was the same as every time I decide to do this sadistic listening session.
I have written well over 800 songs in my own personal library and that doesn't include songs I have written for or with other artists. I think I am about done counting, 'cause by this point, do the numbers really matter? The songs are in strange places. Some in LA, some in Canada...some on hard drives, cds, dvds..."tapes" and floppy discs. I have boxes upon boxes of words on paper that I haven't even gone through. I may have as many words now as times that I have blinked. Because I sucked at every other subject in school, I found solice in writing and reading. Words are empowering because they stir imagination.

So, tonight I put on headphones and went through several old songs. Not every stage of my writing makes me feel this way. I have silly songs, really I do...lol. It seems the bulk of work I revisit is the gut-wrenching rip your heart straight from your chest ugly ugly ugly material. I'm almost embarrassed to hear it. But, with the voice of my mother firm in the background of my conscience, I continue to write down everything because she told me to.

What I always find with this revisiting of old archives is the intense illness inside my stomach that can appear instantaneously. Alot of these songs aren't produced very well. I would give most of them a 2 out of 10 in production and an 11 out of 10 for having the idiotic nerve that I could write them in the setting I was living in. Very courageous or stupid. They affect me so much when I listen not because they sound particularly good, but I sound mentally disturbed. I feel like I am listening to a girl who needs serious help. For the first few minutes I feel sorry for her...then I become her...and that is the scary part.

I think because my mind is so much clearer nowadays, I find the listening experience immensely disturbing. It was disturbing that I was so ill. With this new clarity I found myself massively pissed off at the people who dominated my subject matter. It would be mature of me to simply forgive them and just view this as a diary entry and oh-so-historical part of my character, but the truth of this situation is that there was over a decade of straight brutality preceded by years here and there of nausea. When it sounds like a singer is getting sick while singing about the subject, it's hard to just chalk it up to a character-building experience. Weird to remove myself from that person like that.

Much like trying on all that old jewellery, I think that this is a similar category of revisiting things I am simply not ready to keep a clear head about. It's too too much. I have won some pretty epic battles in my fight to get me back, but some of these archives are incredibly painful and leave me quite sour. I guess I could have learned the lesson when I was trying on those rings...but you'd think."Oh this is something artistic in my past..that doesn't compare." But it does. It's like asking myself to fight quicksand. The torture is bizarre.

Above all that, I feel like I just wasted a bunch of time that I could have been doing something else. I learned not to drive by those old houses. I don't weep in old photo albums...why would I revisit this archive of songs now?

There has to be a time to move forward. I don't hate the songs, on the contrary ...I feel sad for them.

But you know the shittiest part of tonight's listening? I'm doubly pissed off that I wasn't allowed to take all these ill-produced ideas and give them the production they deserved. Now it's too late to do that because I emotionally couldn't take it on nor would there be enough years on earth to do it all. For that, I think I will always harbor some resentment to those who were in the subject matter even though I preach forgiveness.

Those songs were abused children...it seems so utterly unforgiveable to me.
However, I learned once again tonight in listening to them, that they aren't the ones to blame...nor was I when I wrote them. It's a bloody wonder I am alive.

And...................now done feeling sorry for myself. I'm going to bed.

Have you wasted time like this on things that simply aren't helpful to the balance of who you are? Is it just that we hate things left in an unsettled state?
I feel like it's just breeding unnecessary anger this evening for me.

Ah well, this kind of writing helps. Looks better on the computer screen than in my head. That's for sure.

Karen

"Living is strife and torment, disappointment and love and sacrifice, golden sunsets and black storms. I said that some time ago, and today I do not think I would add one word."~Laurence Olivier