Wow. That last post of mine was brilliant. So many words, so few spelling mistakes, so very glad I'm me. I am in a hurry, nevertheless, to put some considerable distance between that most splendid thing I've just written and my gifted, most handsome, self. I just want to, okay? Okay. Oh music come and light my heart's dark places....
I enjoy an uneasy relationship with music, and this is not all down to mild synaesthesia. Certain passages contain a residual potency that makes them capable of inflicting an agonisingly beautiful pain. They just worm their way inside of me and go to work. I actively seek this out. These fragments, these moments, these glimpses of higher ideals. These things, my darling and elusive God, allow me to believe that this search for something may one day lead me to happiness, and that happiness itself is what I've been craving all along. (Although I doubt it, to be fair, because the very concept of "happiness" makes me feel queasy.)
Searching, looking, listening, hoping. I can feel the yearning in the music of Bach and in the wounding genius of Mozart. Denied the comfort of faith by my stubbornly firm grip on our bleakest of realities, I still find it possible to imagine the face of God being touched by this ascending and all too pitifully human noise. How is it possible to remain untouched by this searing and deadly beauty? It is agony. A view partially revealed, an itch almost scratched, as you hurtle with hope and reach out, preparing yourself to believe, daring to look for a lightness. Why does this have to end? Why on earth does it never quite take you there? You are left hanging, spent and alone, returned cruelly once more to the aching void, as the music dies in your soul.
It is like a form of self-inflicted torture. Conclusive proof, if any were needed, that it is perfectly possible to feel both happy and sad, hopeful and hopeless, at exactly one moment in time. You know the end is coming, but for those few unbearably hurtful and uplifting seconds, you dare to allow yourself to believe otherwise. Or is that just me?
Anyway, I'm really going to need to write about football or sex in my next post, lest people start thinking I'm gay.
