another still

i suspect if there was an OST album compiled specifically for my life, it would contain a lot of tracks from lifehouse and tori amos. don’t get me wrong, i listen to the radio enough to know what’s on top 10, i spend sufficient time on mtv to know what’s new and upcoming and i think i know a wide enough repertoire to sing along at live sets.

but not all music speak to me. some songs are just packaged prettily with no substance, like a tetrapak of sweet air. others are like the stench of cigars that linger in the air and on your clothes long after it had burned out. and then there are the rare some that are like the tattoos you choose to engrave on yourself – it hurts to do it, it hurts even more to remove it and it hurts looking at it, especially when you don’t want it there but looking makes you feel or at least reminds you than you are more real and alive that you think or would like to be.

lifehouse and tori, i don’t know what’s with them but they get to me. a lot. a lot of their tracks create memories, theme songs pegged to a moment you wish never to forget but sometimes want erased. it’s painfully beautiful and self indulgent.

the other night i was at a pub that featured a different live act everynight and thankfully a band that i liked pretty much was playing. in fact, it was the female lead that inspired me to get a guitar and learn to play. well everyone has a role model for a different activity.

while having a smoke outside with one of my best friends, i bumped into someone who used to be damn significant. of course, that was 5 years back that he had the right to be significant. but for no reason whatsoever, my heart felt like it fell to the floor and everything else around me turned into a still like a photograph. a reel of moving film ran in my head, shot after shot of nostalgia filled the smoky air.

lifehouse’s “blind” used to fill my ears on nights that i just didn’t want to go out and just wanted to sit here and write and fill up on hot bitter earl grey. random memories of a series of significant people would come and go within a span of a track. and now, we were sitting at the same table, listening to a live rendition of the song, sharing a smoke. how ironic can life get.

as sudden and jolting the moment was, it ended. a new sun the next morning reminded me how life went on with or without purpose. everything was back to normal or as normal as life would serve you on a platter. it was just another fleeting moment that might serve as a black and white still on another random night.

if i needed to be back in that moment again, i could just listen to the track once more.

from lifehouse – blind
I would fall asleep
Only in hopes of dreaming
That everything would be like it was before
But nights like this it seems are slowly fleeting
They disappear as reality is crashing to the floor