Words, Pictures to Live and Breathe By

So I’ve done, and accomplished pretty much nothing over the past fortnight.

Living in a college town in Ireland is a surreal experience, the people you meet and socialize with are generally, if not just, emerging from the protective bubble of adolescence, then re-living it in a vain attempt to delay the process of growing up, a kind of second adolescence, if you will, that lasts until a person's twenties begin slipping away.

I’m lucky in that I still have a fair bit of time left to me before leaving this childish rerun behind, but perhaps the only thing that this state has going for it are its interludes.

The interlude for a person of my age and station takes the form of a period of time between a day and a month in which you forget about the world and its petty triflings and simply do what you want to do. These times generally turn into an orgy of excess and selfishness wherein you sit around and do nothing, save for things I would not feel comfortable discussing in detail here, given their questionable legality.

While it may sound like fun, coming back to Earth from one of these interludes is a sobering (both literally and metaphorically) experience. You realize that you have spent your time behaving in a way incompatible with any accepted norm of existence, that you have neglected classes, failed to call your girlfriend, lost touch completely with your family and other assorted negative happenings.

To fill time while not filling time, all the while hovering somewhere between lucid sobriety and downright inebriated messiness is not an easy task to accomplish, and a person in the midst of an interlude needs to have a strong sense of self, and willingness to be alone to see it through.

During my personal interludes I find myself again and again sitting on a chair by myself late at night, when all but the most hardened of our kind have given up and gone to bed, either reading, listening to music, or watching a film.

Such experiences have made me think more than once about our sense of self, identity, and the importance of the art we love both in the way we choose to live our lives, and the person we feel that other people see us as, or the person we ourselves see in the mirror.

I have always found that from a much younger age than I am now (I mean, I’m still 25, so I’m not about to talk about childhood like it’s something alien or something I can barely remember), that when it came to my idea of self, the person I’ve been, am, and aspire to be, other people have always described it better, with more elegance and eloquency of expression than I could ever hope to do.

I find that, if someone asks me my mood at a given time, or asks how my week has been, I have to refer them to a lyric from a song I’ve been listening to, a monologue or memorable line from a book, or a single screenshot from a film I have loved.

Others have always put it better than I can ever hope to myself.

Words are tormentors, they hover around, immortal, circling and recircling a person's head, innumerable potentialities and forms of expression, with perfection of such always a step or two too far to reach.

When I try to capture my thoughts in a piece of writing, or a melody I write, I find that my body is ignorant and stupid, my fingers too slow to ever properly capture a moment or feeling correctly, the mind always at least two or three steps ahead of the body, making a search for perfection a futile exercise of trying to catch a beautiful butterfly in a net that is old, and riddled with holes from which it can escape.

So how come my favourite writers and musicians have captured these feelings perfectly for years?

How come I can listen to Iron and Wine’s “Trapeze Swinger” and know that these are the exact words I would hope to leave a beloved partner, I’m not sure even exists for me, with, after my eventual death? How can I listen to “Hear You Me” by Jimmy Eat World and know that I would happily spend the rest of my existence praying to be a good and worthy enough person to have that song played at my funeral? How can I hear Ray LaMontagne sing heartbreakingly on “Jolene” that despite his worldly experience he is nowhere close to knowing what love means, or any of the millions of examples of genius that surround us in the books we read, songs we listen to or films we watch?

Am I simply stupid?

Is it just like that for me alone, the result of me simply not being good enough, or worthy enough to accurately express the feelings I possess, or is it so for everyone, a fundamental truth that to describe for others is achievable, but for oneself is an impossibility?

And how much of our identity is shaped by these lines and melodies, do we feel like this because on a minor level we identify with the emotion being expressed and allow ourselves to feel that particular emotion fully, or do we listen to the music we do because it allows us the most opportunity to hear something we can identify with?

Do I worship Ryan Adams because I too write a lot and have skirted with legality in my day to day life, or do I write a lot and skirt legality in my day to day life because I worship Ryan Adams? And who am I anyway? Am I anything apart from a composite of the books I’ve read, albums I’ve loved or movies I’ve watched again and again? Can I ever be anyone who is not simply trying to live up to the best of fictional characters I have loved and admired? Will I ever be someone who doesn’t live like that?

I don’t know. I never knew, and never will know. Worrying about something like that is enough to make your head explode, as they are all questions that are beyond my simple intellect when it comes to finding answers to. In the meantime, I will listen to my music, read my books and watch the films that bring me enjoyment, try not to damage the lives of others and try and be a person who is a little better in every way with every passing day.

I would hope that, my wishes for these pieces to not be a blog notwithstanding, that whoever reads this will add their own books, songs and films to the comments section, the works of art that sum you up at this particular moment, the support frames that get us through what can be a horribly cruel and harsh world.

I will put my money where my mouth is, and will supply my own every week, so that even if you don’t know me, you can listen to the songs and read the passages and know me, truthfully, as well as I know myself.

Have a good week.

Songs, 13th February 2010: Ryan Adams- “This House is Not for Sale” and “My Winding Wheel”

Death Cab for Cutie- “Expo ‘86”

Michael Penn- “Walter Reed”

Books- The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Don Quixote, Cervantes.

Films- The Basketball Diaries, and Invictus.