The Importance of Feeling
A friend of mine will only like a movie if it meets a certain criteria: It must make her feel something.
I'm not sure if this is the hippest approach to appreciating art these days, but it does make sense. What good is the piece of music, or painting, or poem, if it doesn't make us feel? It doesn't even matter what the feeling is, if it is rage, or nostalgia, or sexual excitement. It only matters if it makes us feel.
I'm thinking the same could be said about the people in our lives.
When I was about 14, in my seat inside the aircraft miles above ground, in the low hum of slumbering silence around me, something beautiful came from the radio through the headphones into my ears. It was Crowded House's "Four Seasons in One Day". I felt something.
I felt the rush of a perfect song heard for the first time, the way the melody, the rhythm, the arrangement, the quiver of the voice, the gap of seeming non-sound in between the piercing notes, the way it all came charging like a mad flood and translated itself within me into a feeling.
Fuck me if I knew what that feeling was. But it was.
I stayed on that radio just so I can hear the song one more time, because I knew those in-flight programs eventually end and start over again. I wanted to hear the song again and again and again because I wanted the feeling to last. Maybe forever.
Years later, I finally got myself a CD of Crowded House's Recurring Dream. The slowly building intro of Track 13 flowing like syrup through the speakers felt like a reunion. I would play the song to death in weeks, months, years, so much so that I probably depleted the rush. I remember closing my eyes one time, trying to look for the feeling as the song played. That feeling up in the clouds, I would never feel it again. I could listen to the song now, but it won't be there. A feeling is not a photograph. You can't keep it in a box, take it out everyday to look at it, and it stays the same photograph. I doubt a feeling can be duplicated in exactly the same way. Coming back to the feeling will always be a slightly different experience. Maybe it could be similar, but you just know there's a shade of it that's off, like a pea under a thousand mattresses, like the difference between 35% magenta and 34% magenta.
But even if that first rush had been lost from "Four Seasons in One Day", I know this for sure: I never stopped loving that song.
I could pop it in my CD player right now, and when I hear it, I know it means something to me. Maybe I don't know how much, because how can I possibly quantify that? And maybe I don't know what that meaning is, the words for it. But there it is, and I could never in my entire life reject or disown it. Even if it doesn't make me feel anymore whatever it used to.
For so long, it has been a difficult question to answer: Is feeling the same as love? Is love a feeling? I think I know the answer.
For months now, I have wondered if my boyfriend, now my ex, had stopped loving me. I guess I'll never really know. But it seems there can only be two possible answers: One is that he will always love me. The other is that he has never loved me at all. Because the idea that he once loved me, but stopped along the way, just seems absurd now. I cannot imagine an end to love. I can imagine an end to feelings, a shift, a change, an obliteration, a transmogriphication, especially that rush, of the first time, the tingling sensations. With much repetition, it becomes unrecognizable, hard to find no matter how many times you hold his hand or try to kiss him like you did the first time. But love is a much more hard-headed sonofabitch, like titanium, like cockroaches. When it comes, it pretty much stays. I will love my bestest friends forever, even if I don't know why anymore, even if the specific feelings have been lost somewhere along the way, even if they don't come on the radio as often as they used to. I love my family, and I don't even know how that started. And certainly the feelings haven't always been positive. There was rage and disappointment and pity and fear, but none so still and reliable as that which is not a feeling. I would hate to think of my boyfriend, now my ex, as someone who invested in just the feelings, who put his hopes on it, bet the farm. I would hate to think it. I would hate to start another relationship with someone who discovered the rush and decided it could be like a photograph you can bottle forever. I would hate to be left alone after the rush dies because I know it dies.
This entry was inspired by repeated viewings for the past several days of the DVD Ben Folds and West Australian Symphony Orchestra Live in Perth, which made me feel something.
Sweet-Souled Genius, will you marry me?
I'm not sure if this is the hippest approach to appreciating art these days, but it does make sense. What good is the piece of music, or painting, or poem, if it doesn't make us feel? It doesn't even matter what the feeling is, if it is rage, or nostalgia, or sexual excitement. It only matters if it makes us feel.
I'm thinking the same could be said about the people in our lives.
When I was about 14, in my seat inside the aircraft miles above ground, in the low hum of slumbering silence around me, something beautiful came from the radio through the headphones into my ears. It was Crowded House's "Four Seasons in One Day". I felt something.
I felt the rush of a perfect song heard for the first time, the way the melody, the rhythm, the arrangement, the quiver of the voice, the gap of seeming non-sound in between the piercing notes, the way it all came charging like a mad flood and translated itself within me into a feeling.
Fuck me if I knew what that feeling was. But it was.
I stayed on that radio just so I can hear the song one more time, because I knew those in-flight programs eventually end and start over again. I wanted to hear the song again and again and again because I wanted the feeling to last. Maybe forever.
Years later, I finally got myself a CD of Crowded House's Recurring Dream. The slowly building intro of Track 13 flowing like syrup through the speakers felt like a reunion. I would play the song to death in weeks, months, years, so much so that I probably depleted the rush. I remember closing my eyes one time, trying to look for the feeling as the song played. That feeling up in the clouds, I would never feel it again. I could listen to the song now, but it won't be there. A feeling is not a photograph. You can't keep it in a box, take it out everyday to look at it, and it stays the same photograph. I doubt a feeling can be duplicated in exactly the same way. Coming back to the feeling will always be a slightly different experience. Maybe it could be similar, but you just know there's a shade of it that's off, like a pea under a thousand mattresses, like the difference between 35% magenta and 34% magenta.
But even if that first rush had been lost from "Four Seasons in One Day", I know this for sure: I never stopped loving that song.
I could pop it in my CD player right now, and when I hear it, I know it means something to me. Maybe I don't know how much, because how can I possibly quantify that? And maybe I don't know what that meaning is, the words for it. But there it is, and I could never in my entire life reject or disown it. Even if it doesn't make me feel anymore whatever it used to.
For so long, it has been a difficult question to answer: Is feeling the same as love? Is love a feeling? I think I know the answer.
For months now, I have wondered if my boyfriend, now my ex, had stopped loving me. I guess I'll never really know. But it seems there can only be two possible answers: One is that he will always love me. The other is that he has never loved me at all. Because the idea that he once loved me, but stopped along the way, just seems absurd now. I cannot imagine an end to love. I can imagine an end to feelings, a shift, a change, an obliteration, a transmogriphication, especially that rush, of the first time, the tingling sensations. With much repetition, it becomes unrecognizable, hard to find no matter how many times you hold his hand or try to kiss him like you did the first time. But love is a much more hard-headed sonofabitch, like titanium, like cockroaches. When it comes, it pretty much stays. I will love my bestest friends forever, even if I don't know why anymore, even if the specific feelings have been lost somewhere along the way, even if they don't come on the radio as often as they used to. I love my family, and I don't even know how that started. And certainly the feelings haven't always been positive. There was rage and disappointment and pity and fear, but none so still and reliable as that which is not a feeling. I would hate to think of my boyfriend, now my ex, as someone who invested in just the feelings, who put his hopes on it, bet the farm. I would hate to think it. I would hate to start another relationship with someone who discovered the rush and decided it could be like a photograph you can bottle forever. I would hate to be left alone after the rush dies because I know it dies.
This entry was inspired by repeated viewings for the past several days of the DVD Ben Folds and West Australian Symphony Orchestra Live in Perth, which made me feel something.
Sweet-Souled Genius, will you marry me?