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You seem like you're so restless
Final T&S day... til we cross streams again and get Mae Whitman in their I Was A Fool video. (If you have been enjoying my random flailing, I Was A Fool has a lyric video to tide you over til then. *cough*
Our last song is also the last song on the album. Shock To Your System is the oddball on the record (yes. I am old) in that it sounds very little like any of the other songs. It also sounds like a record closer. I like my last song on any given album to go big. So big you feel the need to crank the volume way up and have your own mini concert right there, wherever you happen to be. Go big or go home, kids. And they do. Oh, do they.
The other reason I love Shock to Your System (and consider it to be one of the three best songs to sing along to) is the lyrical content. It's sung as if someone is both sympathizing with the fact that hey, life just kicked you in the kneecaps again but it's time to drag yourself back up to your feet and start moving forward. It won't be easy, it won't be fun at first, but you've got to do it. So you need to climb out of your funk and get on with your life.
And if you should need someone there to keep you going, well... you've got someone. Even if that someone is simply the part of you that wants to move past this. The great part of this is that's actually what was intended. Woo!
You got a shock to your system
knocked your heart right out of sync
you're only meant to hurt once in awhile
who gave you reason?
you're only meant to cry once in awhile
who gave you reason?
you got a shock to your system
pull yourself out of it
I know that shock to your system
knocked your heart right out of sync
what you are
what you are
what you are
what you are is
l o n e l y
you must rely on love once in awhile
to give you reason
you must rely on me once in awhile
to give you reason
I wrote the song as if it's from the perspective of someone singing the song to me.
So maybe it's like me now giving advice to myself back then.
---
It's rarely fun to realize you've been living a bit of a cliché and that you were only partially aware of it at the time. I suppose that since I've become aware of it I'll better be able to actually deal with it instead of pretending. Though lord knows I'm good at pretending...
I noticed that right after my father died I was unable to really concentrate on reading much of anything at all. This was somehow not a big surprise and also a huge shock all at the same time. On the one hand, of course I couldn't just sit here and read through someone else's fictional problems or concentrate on anything all that long because my mind was otherwise preoccupied with not falling apart. One foot in front of the other, keep the momentum going because someone had to keep it together and with the boy drinking and Mom having lost her husband and Widget being a child, I elected myself. It's not like I didn't realize there was no law that said someone had to be holding it together, or even that if I did come apart at the seams that someone else wouldn't step up to the challenge.
It just didn't seem likely nor did it seem right.
So the trade-off was that I couldn't really read much beyond a whole shitton of BSC and SVH books. It was unusual because I barely remember a time when I didn't read to feel better or just because I enjoy it. I really don't think I need to remind anyone here but just in case: I am a big ol' book nerd. I love them. The feel, the smell, the crisp pages of a new book and the softer pages of a well loved books. I don't mind margin writing though I don't really suggest it for library books nor do I engage in it, but I do like the peek behind the curtain of whomever last owned the book. Books. I sort them for fun.
Having them not bring me much of any solace was not something I would have expected prior to going through the past two years, but as it was happening it made sense. Fiction has a way of killing people without necessarily dealing with the fallout in ways that should be read by someone who can't afford to just randomly start sobbing at work. No big deal.
While I didn't disappear into the books of my childhood, I did keep them around and I read through quite a few, skipping some of the really obvious ones that I figured would trigger a crying jag that might not end.
I was aware of cutting this bit of my normal happiness out of my life as it happened, though it wasn't really a conscious decision.
What I didn't realize until yesterday (though it had been bubbling up for awhile) was that I'd also cut out music. I can't claim to be a huge music person in that I know anything beyond "I like this" and I'm not a die hard "music is life!" person, but I will admit that it adds something to life.
And I cut it right out without much of a thought. I mourned the inability to read through the pain but I didn't even notice that while my brother would crank up his music to room shaking levels, my own music collection was literally collecting dust and not much more. Maybe at first I was afraid to connect any other songs to a time in my life I didn't really need any further reminders of, but it soon spiraled into not listening to much of anything at all.
At the risk of sounding incredibly dippy, the right song adds some color into your world. Sometimes in a more literal sense (some songs/voices have colors) and sometimes it's just something people say that makes sense even if I can't really articulate why. Without it, life becomes a blur of grey.
So. Yeah. I'd walked right into the cliché of someone's death sucking the color out of my life. And I let it happen so thoroughly that it didn't even really ping on my radar until something eventually rushed in to fill the void.
The last two years have been filled with other people's music more often than not. Mums would pick the radio station more often than not, especially at home, Widget raided his father's music collection in a sense, and the boy leaned on Billy Joel for damn near a year, probably because the ride home from the hospital featured one of his songs and the ride there had as well, I believe. But aside from a few Tori songs played in the shower, my side of the musical conversation has been pretty quiet.
Until now.
And that's why I've been so enthusiastically sharing Heartthrob. Not just to annoy you, though that might be an added bonus.
Could someone use their magic ways to hope/pray/whatever that I don't get in trouble for this morning? I was covering the front register while K was on her break. I might have been reading a magazine *cough* while waiting for the few customers I had in the store to come up to the front. I look up every so often but the Icee machine is so loud that people can sneak up on us (I know it's not just me because EVERYONE complains about the noise) and the next thing I know, a man awfully dressed up for 5:30am is walking by me (I'm behind the small magazine rack that is in part of the impulse counter) and saying good morning. I cheerfully echo this good morning and smile as much as I can as I think "ohcrapmuffins." His bag indicates he's either doing some serious prescription picking up in pharmacy or... that he's Corporate.
About ten minutes or so later, C comes up and asks if that's our District Manager. I've never met the man so I dunno. "Did you say hello?" Yes. Yes I did. I just didn't say it first. That's right. I am spazzing over not having said hello first. Which sounds ridiculous but couple that with the magazine (which he couldn't have seen although he could have probably guessed) and a later text asking if I'd been wearing my name tag (no. My little plastic holder broke and I don't think we ever got any more since everyone else whose broke after we ran out has had the same problem) though I never heard anything beyond that. To be fair there is absolutely no way he could have known I wasn't wearing my name tag because of the magazines between us and how long the lanyard things are and also? Once he went into the office he never surfaced before I booked it out of there.
But still. I fret. Because it's what I do.
So tell me it'll be okay and I will believe you.
Our last song is also the last song on the album. Shock To Your System is the oddball on the record (yes. I am old) in that it sounds very little like any of the other songs. It also sounds like a record closer. I like my last song on any given album to go big. So big you feel the need to crank the volume way up and have your own mini concert right there, wherever you happen to be. Go big or go home, kids. And they do. Oh, do they.
The other reason I love Shock to Your System (and consider it to be one of the three best songs to sing along to) is the lyrical content. It's sung as if someone is both sympathizing with the fact that hey, life just kicked you in the kneecaps again but it's time to drag yourself back up to your feet and start moving forward. It won't be easy, it won't be fun at first, but you've got to do it. So you need to climb out of your funk and get on with your life.
And if you should need someone there to keep you going, well... you've got someone. Even if that someone is simply the part of you that wants to move past this. The great part of this is that's actually what was intended. Woo!
You got a shock to your system
knocked your heart right out of sync
you're only meant to hurt once in awhile
who gave you reason?
you're only meant to cry once in awhile
who gave you reason?
you got a shock to your system
pull yourself out of it
I know that shock to your system
knocked your heart right out of sync
what you are
what you are
what you are
what you are is
l o n e l y
you must rely on love once in awhile
to give you reason
you must rely on me once in awhile
to give you reason
I wrote the song as if it's from the perspective of someone singing the song to me.
So maybe it's like me now giving advice to myself back then.
---
It's rarely fun to realize you've been living a bit of a cliché and that you were only partially aware of it at the time. I suppose that since I've become aware of it I'll better be able to actually deal with it instead of pretending. Though lord knows I'm good at pretending...
I noticed that right after my father died I was unable to really concentrate on reading much of anything at all. This was somehow not a big surprise and also a huge shock all at the same time. On the one hand, of course I couldn't just sit here and read through someone else's fictional problems or concentrate on anything all that long because my mind was otherwise preoccupied with not falling apart. One foot in front of the other, keep the momentum going because someone had to keep it together and with the boy drinking and Mom having lost her husband and Widget being a child, I elected myself. It's not like I didn't realize there was no law that said someone had to be holding it together, or even that if I did come apart at the seams that someone else wouldn't step up to the challenge.
It just didn't seem likely nor did it seem right.
So the trade-off was that I couldn't really read much beyond a whole shitton of BSC and SVH books. It was unusual because I barely remember a time when I didn't read to feel better or just because I enjoy it. I really don't think I need to remind anyone here but just in case: I am a big ol' book nerd. I love them. The feel, the smell, the crisp pages of a new book and the softer pages of a well loved books. I don't mind margin writing though I don't really suggest it for library books nor do I engage in it, but I do like the peek behind the curtain of whomever last owned the book. Books. I sort them for fun.
Having them not bring me much of any solace was not something I would have expected prior to going through the past two years, but as it was happening it made sense. Fiction has a way of killing people without necessarily dealing with the fallout in ways that should be read by someone who can't afford to just randomly start sobbing at work. No big deal.
While I didn't disappear into the books of my childhood, I did keep them around and I read through quite a few, skipping some of the really obvious ones that I figured would trigger a crying jag that might not end.
I was aware of cutting this bit of my normal happiness out of my life as it happened, though it wasn't really a conscious decision.
What I didn't realize until yesterday (though it had been bubbling up for awhile) was that I'd also cut out music. I can't claim to be a huge music person in that I know anything beyond "I like this" and I'm not a die hard "music is life!" person, but I will admit that it adds something to life.
And I cut it right out without much of a thought. I mourned the inability to read through the pain but I didn't even notice that while my brother would crank up his music to room shaking levels, my own music collection was literally collecting dust and not much more. Maybe at first I was afraid to connect any other songs to a time in my life I didn't really need any further reminders of, but it soon spiraled into not listening to much of anything at all.
At the risk of sounding incredibly dippy, the right song adds some color into your world. Sometimes in a more literal sense (some songs/voices have colors) and sometimes it's just something people say that makes sense even if I can't really articulate why. Without it, life becomes a blur of grey.
So. Yeah. I'd walked right into the cliché of someone's death sucking the color out of my life. And I let it happen so thoroughly that it didn't even really ping on my radar until something eventually rushed in to fill the void.
The last two years have been filled with other people's music more often than not. Mums would pick the radio station more often than not, especially at home, Widget raided his father's music collection in a sense, and the boy leaned on Billy Joel for damn near a year, probably because the ride home from the hospital featured one of his songs and the ride there had as well, I believe. But aside from a few Tori songs played in the shower, my side of the musical conversation has been pretty quiet.
Until now.
And that's why I've been so enthusiastically sharing Heartthrob. Not just to annoy you, though that might be an added bonus.
Could someone use their magic ways to hope/pray/whatever that I don't get in trouble for this morning? I was covering the front register while K was on her break. I might have been reading a magazine *cough* while waiting for the few customers I had in the store to come up to the front. I look up every so often but the Icee machine is so loud that people can sneak up on us (I know it's not just me because EVERYONE complains about the noise) and the next thing I know, a man awfully dressed up for 5:30am is walking by me (I'm behind the small magazine rack that is in part of the impulse counter) and saying good morning. I cheerfully echo this good morning and smile as much as I can as I think "ohcrapmuffins." His bag indicates he's either doing some serious prescription picking up in pharmacy or... that he's Corporate.
About ten minutes or so later, C comes up and asks if that's our District Manager. I've never met the man so I dunno. "Did you say hello?" Yes. Yes I did. I just didn't say it first. That's right. I am spazzing over not having said hello first. Which sounds ridiculous but couple that with the magazine (which he couldn't have seen although he could have probably guessed) and a later text asking if I'd been wearing my name tag (no. My little plastic holder broke and I don't think we ever got any more since everyone else whose broke after we ran out has had the same problem) though I never heard anything beyond that. To be fair there is absolutely no way he could have known I wasn't wearing my name tag because of the magazines between us and how long the lanyard things are and also? Once he went into the office he never surfaced before I booked it out of there.
But still. I fret. Because it's what I do.
So tell me it'll be okay and I will believe you.