Evanescence
I've been momentarily inspired by a post over at "I Lost Again" to write - not a plug for my favourite group, but - an account of perhaps why their music so directly affects me.
See, I was busy being cunted by love a few years ago. I broke up with a girl that I'd been out with for three years. As is the way of these things, the actual break-up was a year previous, but we'd somehow come back together and clung onto what we had for an extra year, because it was shamelessly fucking amazing. Of course, it wasn't amazing by that point, though. It was fucked. A year of having an on-the-rocks relationship where you're both desperately clinging to a love long finished will destroy your soul. If you took a dead horse and beat it with a sledgehammer for twelve months, imagine what it would look like. That's what our relationship looked like. I don't recommend my foolish antics.
Shortly after that year-long-two-way-sympathy-fuck I grew up a lot and a year later I'd somehow re-forged my memories of what had happened, to occlude the fuck-ups and include only the goodness - and there was a lot of goodness, no matter how many of my best friends tell me "the whole thing was utterly fucked from start to finish". Bless 'em. But yes, you can't really tell the goodness of a relationship from the outside, as the best parts are always secret. Like the anal sex whilst she wears a nun's habit.
So a year later I was fine, and owing to this newfound point of clarity, I decided it would be good and healthy to get in touch with her again. Better to stay in touch as friends, than build her up into an incarnation of lost love that would forever shadow any other girls I meet. Been there before and it doesn't help with getting laid.
So I forwarded my number to her, through two degrees of mutual friends, with the suggestion we get together as friends sometime if she liked.
A year passed.
I was on the tube when she called, and with a single "hello" I was instantly paralysed in both mind and body. It's a strange feeling to describe, to hear a voice that was once such a part of you, and then not a part of you to the point of forgetting what it sounds like, and then hearing it again to find that not only do you recognise every single fucking microtone and wavelength of it, but that it rushes to fill the exact same spaces it used to, in an instant. I've never taken heroin, but it somehow felt like I'd just injected it into my brain.
After the initial hit, drenched in a thousand emotions and memories, I went into a vaguely dreamlike state as we spoke. She said she felt the same way. And we spoke, in that dreamlike state, for about an hour. And, strangely, there was no small-talk. No getting to know each other after years of separation. We just talked how we always used to talk, straight off the bat, simply minus the phone-sex and arguments.
I realised it was a bad idea, even after this long, to have spoken to her. I drove round there the same night, anyway.
No, we didn't fuck. It was far deeper than that. We stayed up and spoke until the small hours, drinking good wine and pondering what happened between us and how we felt after all this time. A lot of things, which were previously left unsaid, were said. So many secrets were exhumed and autopsied, their flakey carcasses giving way to bright, shiny truths and regrets. Everything was dealt with, and the closure I thought I had was suddenly eclipsed by this final laying to rest of our relationship. All the while I felt like I was speaking to a ghost.
We slept in the same bed, though only cuddling was involved. The next morning, I felt like something had left me forever. Or, at least, was starting to leave me forever. I asked her what music she'd been playing last night, on repeat, during our prolonged chat, because I'd never heard it before and absolutely loved it. She said it was a band called Evanescence.
Then we kissed, and I drove away. We've never spoken since, and I don't think we'll ever speak again.
She was the first girl I ever fell in love with. And now, every single fucking track by Evanescence reminds me of our final night together, when that first love was laid to rest. But not in a sad way. In a way that represents perfect tragedy. For me, their music is now - overwhelmingly - emotive.
And how about this for coincidence:
evanescence
n : the event of fading and gradually vanishing from sight; "the evanescence of the morning mist"
Funny, how these things work out. See you at the next gig.
See, I was busy being cunted by love a few years ago. I broke up with a girl that I'd been out with for three years. As is the way of these things, the actual break-up was a year previous, but we'd somehow come back together and clung onto what we had for an extra year, because it was shamelessly fucking amazing. Of course, it wasn't amazing by that point, though. It was fucked. A year of having an on-the-rocks relationship where you're both desperately clinging to a love long finished will destroy your soul. If you took a dead horse and beat it with a sledgehammer for twelve months, imagine what it would look like. That's what our relationship looked like. I don't recommend my foolish antics.
Shortly after that year-long-two-way-sympathy-fuck I grew up a lot and a year later I'd somehow re-forged my memories of what had happened, to occlude the fuck-ups and include only the goodness - and there was a lot of goodness, no matter how many of my best friends tell me "the whole thing was utterly fucked from start to finish". Bless 'em. But yes, you can't really tell the goodness of a relationship from the outside, as the best parts are always secret. Like the anal sex whilst she wears a nun's habit.
So a year later I was fine, and owing to this newfound point of clarity, I decided it would be good and healthy to get in touch with her again. Better to stay in touch as friends, than build her up into an incarnation of lost love that would forever shadow any other girls I meet. Been there before and it doesn't help with getting laid.
So I forwarded my number to her, through two degrees of mutual friends, with the suggestion we get together as friends sometime if she liked.
A year passed.
I was on the tube when she called, and with a single "hello" I was instantly paralysed in both mind and body. It's a strange feeling to describe, to hear a voice that was once such a part of you, and then not a part of you to the point of forgetting what it sounds like, and then hearing it again to find that not only do you recognise every single fucking microtone and wavelength of it, but that it rushes to fill the exact same spaces it used to, in an instant. I've never taken heroin, but it somehow felt like I'd just injected it into my brain.
After the initial hit, drenched in a thousand emotions and memories, I went into a vaguely dreamlike state as we spoke. She said she felt the same way. And we spoke, in that dreamlike state, for about an hour. And, strangely, there was no small-talk. No getting to know each other after years of separation. We just talked how we always used to talk, straight off the bat, simply minus the phone-sex and arguments.
I realised it was a bad idea, even after this long, to have spoken to her. I drove round there the same night, anyway.
No, we didn't fuck. It was far deeper than that. We stayed up and spoke until the small hours, drinking good wine and pondering what happened between us and how we felt after all this time. A lot of things, which were previously left unsaid, were said. So many secrets were exhumed and autopsied, their flakey carcasses giving way to bright, shiny truths and regrets. Everything was dealt with, and the closure I thought I had was suddenly eclipsed by this final laying to rest of our relationship. All the while I felt like I was speaking to a ghost.
We slept in the same bed, though only cuddling was involved. The next morning, I felt like something had left me forever. Or, at least, was starting to leave me forever. I asked her what music she'd been playing last night, on repeat, during our prolonged chat, because I'd never heard it before and absolutely loved it. She said it was a band called Evanescence.
Then we kissed, and I drove away. We've never spoken since, and I don't think we'll ever speak again.
She was the first girl I ever fell in love with. And now, every single fucking track by Evanescence reminds me of our final night together, when that first love was laid to rest. But not in a sad way. In a way that represents perfect tragedy. For me, their music is now - overwhelmingly - emotive.
And how about this for coincidence:
evanescence
n : the event of fading and gradually vanishing from sight; "the evanescence of the morning mist"
Funny, how these things work out. See you at the next gig.
posted by Juliet is Bleeding... | 10:31 am
I would guess you both did pretty well. And I've been there, the hanging on bit, but without the closure that you achieved.
I now can't talk to him, its way too painful.
Like I said, you made good sense of it all.
I've never really considered myself 'into' music. I know what I like, yes, but I don't talk about it, study it, follow it like some do.
This post made me thing though, all the major events in my life have had a soundtrack. A particular song or artist that summed it all up and that I listened to above anything else at that time.
And right now it's Evanescence.
Glad my post inspired you, enjoyed the story.
Thanks for your comments on my blog! I am in love with that Evanescence album too. I mean, you're so right - every single song is something that can bring you to tears.
Seriously, folks... There's no need to thank me for commenting. In any case, the only thanks I pay attention to are those involving prolonged, actual fellatio of myself.
But on a serious note, re: SerialLoser's comment about having music attached to memories or vice versa or both - yes, I think we all have that. With smells, too, I think. Which is why, if I smell a woman wearing CK's Contradiction, I punch her in the face.
On an actually serious note, to Red_Fred: I hope you're right, and that I did make good sense of it. It just seems a shame that we can never be friends. I guess that's how things go, sometimes. And that's why I hate everything, ever.
Your sister rocks.
Beautifully written. Exactly sums up the vulture-picking necrophilia that both participants of a doomed relationship indulge in..
I remember dancing with my own doomed one, many years ago, in a house that had a fig tree growing up through it. The song we were dancing to is the one I have requested at my funeral.
(Christ, am beginning to feel like stalker)
How is that anything like being a stalker? Unless he's going to be at your funeral and will be freaked out by the choice of song?
Ah. I see my usual complete grasp of the English language has let me down again.
*ahem*
1)I feel like a stalker putting in two comments from nowhere.
2)'He' might well be at my funeral. He's one of my best friends now. Took a very long time though.
Aha. Well, it's not stalkerish to put in comments "from nowhere" - it's all much appreciated, as we have no stable "fanbase" of commenters (as mentioned here).
And kudos on turning a "doomed" into a best friend. Wish I'd managed that one, however long it took.
J-i-B: it's not over until I start singing. You could still get there.
And thanks for the welcome, I shall return.
Cait: You're absolutely right on the YYY front. My boy and I usually get through three songs like decent human beings and then start pawing each other like ferocious bonobos. RAR.
Is this some sort of sick joke, everybody talking about music-to-fuck-to, in a thread about music-to-cut-yourself-to?
Having said that, I clearly need to research everything I can about these Yeah Yeah Yeah folks. Three girls can't be wrong - thanks for the tip.