Thursday: Musical Depression

After that massive post yesterday that most likely bored my singular reader to death, I almost forgot to write one tonight.  As it is, this one will probably be pretty short, unless I come upon some incredibly fountain of inspiration at some point in the next twenty minutes.

Now I could talk about normal problems, such as the Calc test I’m pretty sure I failed this morning or the four extra hours I spent at school finishing the final issue of the newspaper (although that’s not a problem so much as it leaves me mentally exhausted).  However, I’ve got something on my mind that may seem oddly simple, and which anyone reading this should probably ignore, but which I feel like writing out.

I go on music binges.  I listen to different bands in giant bursts; sometimes for days on end, I’ll listen to a few songs or album wanting nothing but to hear the same voice and guitar and drums and style.  This week, the subject of my binge was Maroon 5… which I think has actually dropped me into a partial funk.  When you can’t stop listening to everything from This Love and Makes Me Wonder to Daylight and Payphone, despite the fact that each song is basically about failed love… well… it sounds melodramatic but it gets really damn depressing.

Which brings me to a point that was not the original point of this post (but dammit, this is my blog, and I do what I want), that Maroon 5 is really freaking depressing.  Besides maybe Moves Like Jagger, which is either about dancing or mental disease, every single Maroon 5 song is about messed-up love, abusive love, the need for love, the hatred of love, or the pain of having to abandon love.  In other words, I can’t listen to one of my favorite bands without being immediately depressed.  What a wonderful predicament.

SONG OF THE DAY: DAYLIGHT

I apologize to the purists and the critics, but Daylight is easily my favorite Maroon 5 song.  And it also happens to be the most depressing one of them all; it’s told by a guy who has found love, or at least something resembling it, and is being forced to leave.  This guy actually caught the green light, and has to let it go.

Adios.

Wednesday: The Green Light

Anyone who has ever gone through the American school system should know what that title is referring to; it is the central symbol of The Great Gatsby, one of the most widely read and celebrated works of American literature.

[To anyone who has not read the book, spoiler alert.  I can’t write this post without giving away pretty much every facet of the book.]

I remember picking it up less than a month ago with a feeling of trepidation; I’d been looking forward to Gatsby all semester, and I was afraid I would be disappointed.  Then I began to read, and I just couldn’t put the book down.  And now, looking back, I’m beginning to understand why that particular story is so resonant and compelling.

Jay Gatsby is almost a mythical figure.  He exists on a higher plane, seemingly reveling in his own flamboyant, ostentatious version of life.  The book’s narrator, Nick Carraway, both despises and admires everything that Gatsby stands for.  But the story holds another aspect.  Gatsby has attained his lifestyle with one goal; he wants to marry the girl of his dreams.  And so, he becomes a gangster and buys a mansion across the bay from his old flame, where he stands every night and watches the flickering green light at the end of her estate’s dock.  That light that symbolizes his dream.

But the light is always clouded by mist and fog, and, just like that, Gatsby’s dream finally falls apart.  Daisy Buchanan rebuffs him after he and Tom, her husband, fight.  So close to achieving his greatest desire, Gatsby falls backward without anyone to catch him.  He clings onto his dream until his death, at the hands of a grief stricken man who believes Gatsby was responsible for his wife’s death (read the book).  Gatsby dies floating in his pool, looking at that distant green light, as his phone begins to ring.

With that scene, so many different emotions swirl that it’s hard to distinguish individual ones.  At the center is fear, that fear that all of us hold, that we will never be able to achieve that one lasting dream.  That we will die reaching toward that green light in the distance, knowing that, if given just one more second, we’d be able to finally grasp it.  That we will fall backward into the void, our last sight being that glow as it fades from iridescent green to midnight black.  It’s a fear of failure, a fear of death, and a fear of never being able to reach what we want utmost from life.  It is longing in its most basic form, a longing so harsh that it eats away until there is nothing left.

SONG OF THE DAY: PAYPHONE

And yet, Gatsby’s death is almost enviable; he dies with the telephone ringing, with the hope that Daisy is calling and asking for him to run back home with her.  He never knows that it’s only Nick, checking up on his friend.  He never sees his empty funeral.  He dies hoping, thinking that he’s about to finally touch that elusive green light.  But, of course, no one puts it better than Fitzgerald in one of the greatest final pages I’ve ever read.

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

I leave you with that simple thought.  Adios.

Tuesday: A Fresh Start

I’ve been debating with myself whether I should give a huge review of the past year, or whether I should drop my two readers little tidbits here and there whenever I run out of ideas.  Seeing as that particular predicament occurs fairly often, I feel like that would be the best idea.  So, apologies, but no year in review for you at the moment.  Instead, I feel like rambling.

Along with my aunts and uncles that invade the Jersey Shore every spring around this time, I view Memorial Day as the unofficial start of summer; it’s when the world really starts to heat up, when school really begins to wind down, and when people decide that public pools are once again acceptable venues.  This being the day after Memorial Day… well, it should be a little special, shouldn’t it?

Aside from one occurrence that I won’t archive on here for certain, definable reasons… today was pretty damn special.  For one, I didn’t fall asleep once, which has been a constant problem this year.  Seriously.  It almost cost me a bunch of math tests because I slept through our entire unit on logarithms.  Although, at the same time, that could have just been due to my dislike of logarithms.

Sorry, random tangent.  Bringing it back around.

Yet, even more awesome than not falling asleep at all was the first meeting for Encore Singers, my school’s most prestigious choir, of which I am incredibly and almost unfairly lucky to be a part (my audition was uncharacteristically good).  We have this tradition at this meeting where everyone sings the national anthem, and then the seniors move away and listen to the underclassmen sing it again.  Let me just say… we sounded quite a bit better than I thought we were going to.  I am really, really looking forward to next year.

SONG OF THE DAY: STARLIGHT

Like I said, over the past eleven months I’ve discovered some pretty awesome music, both by old favorites and some new musicians and bands.  And, to one of my reader’s dismay, I will continue to torture you with songs every night.

Adios.

Monday: A Watershed Moment

It’s been quite a while, hasn’t it?

Maybe I should just start at the beginning.  Welcome (back) to Internet Junk, the blog I abandoned for about a year as I drowned myself in assorted piles of schoolwork and social problems, thereby making myself a completely normal American high-school student.  The only downside, aside from very nearly going insane about a month ago, was that I was forced to abandon old haunts like this one.

But I felt like coming back, and hopefully this time I might actually be able to keep a simple promise.  One post, every night.  No more, no less.  Although I’m sure no one will read it, just like it has always been, I’m hoping I might be able to expel some of that latent energy that’s been building up all year here into the endless chasms of the Internet.

But, in the spirit of tradition, I will make my first post back short and sweet.  Tomorrow, if, for some reason, you feel like coming back, you’ll get the massive consortium of the last several months.  Or maybe I’ll space it out over the summer, when things get boring.  Either could work.

SONG OF THE DAY: PICTURES

Perhaps the best part of this past year is all the new music I’ve managed to hear, either from hearing random songs or from the Voice (of which I am a shameless addict).  There will be no more weeklong strings of Rise Against or Linkin Park; this time, I’ll try to branch out a bit.  Try new things.  After all, isn’t this supposed to be a watershed moment?