I admittedly have a geeky penchant for lyric quoting in everyday convo; the professionals  usually say it best I've found.  I've been wanting to start of list of my favorite lyrics for a while...the ones that give me chills/thrills/heartspills...that make me chuckle and think, and remember.  The following is a non-comprehensive list in progress, and is sorted into those subjects which I personally find most compelling and baffling (those in which I tend to need all the help I can get).

Thanks gods for music.




I started looking, and the bubble burst...
- Coldplay

The more I see, the more I stand alone
- Concrete Blonde

There's so much past inside my present
- Feist

I think the good book is missing some pages
- Tori Amos

Just because you've forgotten doesn't mean you're forgiven
- Arcade Fire

I like to think I'm a mess you'd wear with pride
- Band of Horses

I have been driven like the snow
- Tori Amos

People moving all the time in a perfectly straight line - don't you wanna just curve away?
- Coldplay

If you did it, say you did it (if you didn't - suck it up and say you did)
- Dresden Dolls

Fuck you, for existing in the first place
- Ani DiFranco



It's the devil I love, and that's as funny as real love, and that's as real as true love
- Neko Case

I have nothing to give...I have so much to lose
- Sarah McLaughlin

I gave a lot to you, I take a lot from you too
You slave a lot for me; guess you could say I gave you my edge
- Interpol

Sit on the top of the world, and tell me how you're feeling...what you feel, is what I feel for you
- Dido

Add up the hours of her life that he wasted
To come to the sum that turns love into hatred
- Maps of Norway

How can you say I go about things the wrong way?
I am human and I need to be loved, just like everybody else does.
- The Smiths

I'm a specialist in love and I'm registered to vote
Why don't you come into my barrio?
We'll see if you can float
- Interpol

Stood on the edge tied to a noose, you came along and you cut me loose
- Coldplay



If you go, I will surely die
- The Pixies

I never said I would stay till the end
- The Cure

I'm more than just a little curious
How you're planning to go about
Making your amends to the dead
- A Perfect Circle

I'll chew you up and spit you out
- Concrete Blonde

Never again is what you swore the time before
- Depeche Mode

The promises we made could disappear without a trace...
- The Devlins

I have squandered my resistance for a pocket full of mumbles, such odd promises
- Paul Simon

Any promise we make is as easy to break as the plastic people on the wedding cake
- Concrete Blonde



I don't hate you or want you enough to wake you
- Ladytron

This queen you think you own wants to be a hunter again
- Dido

I didn't want to hurt you, but you're pretty when you cry
- VAST

I'd trade all of my tomorrows for one single yesterday
- Janis Joplin

You've always forgiven me when you should have gotten rid of me
- Maps of Norway

It was exactly then I decided, and drew you out...
- The Cranberries

So then I thought I'd make some plans
But fire thought she'd really rather be water instead
- Tori Amos



My whole existence is flawed; you get me closer to God
- Nine Inch Nails

Some call it Buddha, some call it Allah,
Some call it Jesus, I call it Love
- Concrete Blonde

Get off your cross, we need the wood
- Tori Amos

With every goddess a let-down, every idol a bring-down, it gets you down
- Pretty and Twisted

Been rubbing a bad charm, with holy fingers
- Pixies



Disappointment haunted all my dreams
- The Monkees

If the morning gets you down, and then the evening lets you down...
Obliterate the Sundays, fair play
- Ladytron

I've been looking for something, I've always wanted, but could never find
- Pretty and Twisted

If I was twice the man I could be, I'd still be half of what you need
- Nine Inch Nails

You sign prince of darkness; try squire of dimness!
- Tori Amos

Who did you think I would be?
Ha well...you got me instead
- Concrete Blonde

It's you. Why's it always you, and never me?
- The Perishers

Every man she gives her love, he takes it, and leaves her with her dinner
- Big Head Todd & the Monsters



You can suck anything, but you know wanna be me...bring your sister if you can't handle it
- Tori Amos

Things are getting desperate when all the boys can't be men
- Tori Amos

It's a sad, sad world, when a girl will break a boy just because she can
- Fiona Apple

I worship the trousers that cling to him
- Ella Fitzgerald

We'll make a man out of you yet
Get off your knees and have a look
This is as good as it will get
- Dresden Dolls



If I hurt you, I'll make wine from your tears
- INXS

She can turn dust into champagne
- Tori Amos

My friends think I'm ugly; I got a "masculine" face
- Tom Waits

A wishing-well, of well-wishing...as Anna waves away
- Frank Black

You change all the lead sleepin' in my head to gold
- Arcade Fire

Having part of you, will fill the whole of me
Getting half of you, it feels like everything
- Jon Crosby

No dilettante, or filigree fancy, beats the plastic you
- Pretty and Twisted

Nothing can stop me now
- Nine Inch Nails



Burn down the disco, hang the blessed DJ
- The Smiths

So I let crazy take a spin...kicked off my shoes, shut reason out
- Tori Amos

It's half biology, and half corrective surgery gone wrong
You'll notice something funny if you hang around here for too
Long ago in some black hole before they had these pills to take it back -
I'm half Jill...and half Jack
- Dresden Dolls

She knows no in-between
- Gersey

If you say, I'm not OK, then that's the goal
- Lykki Li

She's got a family, all fifteen flaws in the brain
like everyone else, she'll never get back
- Mason Proper

I'm working my way back to sane
- Frank Black

I'm still enjoying this; that's why I made a mess
- Interpol

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine
- R.E.M.

Shakes your hand, takes your gun, walks you out of the sun
Destroy everything you touch today
Please destroy me this way
- Ladytron



Loneliness, be over...
- Muse

I spent a lifespan with no cellmate
- Interpol

It's like I'm living at the end of the world
- The Cure

Loneliness took me for a ride
- Aerosmith

I can tell, you know what it's like...the long farewell of the hunger strike
- Aimee Mann

Will I wait a lonely lifetime?  If you want me to, I will
- The Beatles

God knows I'm trying my best, but I'm just so tired of this lonely mess
- Coldplay

Come here to me...we'll collect those lonely parts, and set them down
- Interpol

Everyone I know goes away in the end
- Nine Inch Nails



It's the dirtiest clean I know
- Feist

Grasp and reach for a leg of hope
- Violent Femmes

Bloodthirsty sighs when you looked in my eyes
- Mono in VCF

She doesn't know that I left my urge in the icebox
- Interpol

I am milk, I am red hot kitchen
And I am cool, cool as the deep blue ocean
- Garbage

This mellow-thighed chick just put my spine out of place
- David Bowie

When you close my eyes, I can see most anything
- Sinead O'Connor

This is cooling faster than I can
- Tori Amos

Her rabid glow is like braille to the night
- Interpol

She has the blood of reptile, just underneath her skin
- Nine Inch Nails

Bloody your hands on a cactus tree, wipe them on your dress and send it to me
- The Pixies

My pieces did not fit.  There was always a big void right smack in the middle of the puzzle.  Every time I searched myself, or sought solace within, I hit that emptiness.  So, I read a lot of books.  I kept an open mind.  I availed myself of every possible opportunity to receive advice and input from people with more knowledge and better ideas.  I extended olive branches.  I shed my skin and scales and cells.  I scrubbed off the tread marks.  I turned myself inside out.  I languished.  I allowed myself to unabashedly be.  I cultivated the ability to let go even when my most trusted compatriots clung to illusions.  In this way, I gradually learned about the world, humankind in general, and personal humility.  Still the vast blankness in the center of myself remained.

In the toughest moments I reasoned that I would not be alone forever; the pieces would be found eventually and all things would be set right.  I lied to myself to keep going...it was not perfect...it was survival.  Now I'm crowded by my choices and convicted by the past, and I've come to see that the only way to overcome the confinement of this sentence, is to endure it.  So I reconcile the opposing elements within, and as expected find mostly shades of gray.  The aspects I don't yet understand are set aside, with temporary labels noting what is known about them.  The good parts with their triumphal banners are carried in my left hand because it's stronger.  The regrets are heavier and need no identifiers, but I keep them close too.  A life without regrets is a life lived in ignorance; bliss is not attainable without prior intimate knowledge of regret.  I count the loose ends, and reign in the desires beyond me.  Stoke the fires below me even as I douse the flames around me.  Wink at the lions through the bars of the window...  Is it better to believe in something greater than oneself at such times, and be ultimately laid low by the dissolution of that belief, or is it preferable to simply never have hope?  Perhaps it depends on how dysfunctional you can be and still justify it to yourself.

Stepping into the sunlight, I allow the sharp pain of acceptance to wash over me, disturbing hidden scars and recalling old disappointments.  I understand that this is how it must be done.  It's surprisingly easy to succumb to the silent staccato sentence pulsing through me.  I don't fight the urge to be authentic - weak - in a manner indisputable.  Despite this weakened state I find resolve; let my enemies come.  The torment of visceral exposure to a vulgar crowd is reflected in certain minimally observant eyes, but hollow glances are not comforting to those among us who participate rather than spectate.  If I look past my token protective apathy, the anger and disgust become overwhelming, so I personally never bother with shields.  Perhaps the absence of my defense mechanisms should worry me, but at this rare moment I push for nothing save my own bloodsport...the battle must be entertaining.  I seek irrefutable finality because that is the only way my sacrifice is acceptable within.  But fighting of course ensures fresh wounds, and in spite of the tendency to fall on my own sword, the majority are not self-inflicted.  In this way I slowly learn that balance is improbable - I can be a spectator, or I can bleed.

Is it possible to enjoy true solace and peace in this lifetime, or is such reconciliation only achieved by the most auspicious souls?  If there is a place within me where this demonstration isn't required, it is not one I've ever found by standard tactics.  Standing firm and quiet in the heart of chaos makes it seem quite obvious that in the realistic end, and in the best case scenario...there is nothing, no purpose, no reward, no penance.  Retribution, healing, karma, luck, closure, enlightenment, peace - such things don't truly exist.  We make them up to comfort ourselves.

For now I defer to my own requisite mauling.  Once more my blood trails across the dirt of this Colosseum.  If you've come to observe my defeat, you'd best document what you came to see.  Because it's not that I won't ever bleed again...not that I won't stumble again...but I can promise that you won't ever get the chance to see it again.  There are no answers, no missing pieces, no sadistic spectators or masochistic martyrs capable of making me any more whole than I am already.  What I believed to be real, never existed - in my case, authenticity dwells in the empty space between convictions.  So when this spectacle is finally finished, I'll bleed only under my skin, and gather my torn pieces.  And I won't look back as I climb over the gates, disappearing into the omniscient nothingness of the void.

Just as well I write these things, because maybe then they will stick.  Maybe you'll be more likely to read the words and remember them, than if they were spoken through the bitter veil of direct contact.  Also since you don't always remember our conversations or what we talk about in them.

I apologize for not beginning this process long ago.  It was selfish of me and I see that now, but my intention was only to maintain something that meant a great deal to me, and to salvage something positive from it…something that would be of meaning and value to us both.  But I should know that is not always possible.  Even when people care, and generally mean well, life is organic and does not always comply with our nicest wishes.

I want to thank you for illustrating that there are things worth living for, there is hope, however elusive, and it grows sometimes in the unlikeliest, windiest, coldest places of the heart.  Thank you for the music you brought into my life.  Thank you for baptizing me in tears, a hard experience but a necessary bridge from ignorance to enlightenment.  And thank you for all the laughter you have given me in the midst of the otherwise darkest days, thanks for all the smiles I never had to think about when you spoke.  Thanks for remembering the important things, and for the times you said you loved me and meant it.

I wish you will know during those moments of great happiness in your life, that I am proud of you.  I wish you all the joy one life can muster, I wish you patience as wide as the oceans of the world (you really need it), and most especially, I wish you love.  I want you to love and be loved, more than you thought possible, and better than you imagined.  Not many people get that in life, but I think we ALL deserve it...it's one of the shitty truths of this world that such love is impractical and rarely felt for an instant, much less known for a lifetime.  But I wish that for you, because I know your heart is true, and you have a lot to give.  Even more so I know you deserve to receive a lot too, and it will take someone strong and thick-skinned to break through your walls and make you vulnerable.  You have to be vulnerable to truly love, and you have to be humble.  I wish all good things in life for you, and I desperately hope, in my heart, that you will have those things.  Because I have always loved you. and I always will.

 

Remember that you deserve fulfillment, continue to be open-minded and non-judgmental, and try to believe in the occasional miracle or even happy ending.  Not saying goodbye here, just good luck, and I hope to meet you again someday, somehow, in a better life and time.

Loneliness, that is what it all comes down to.  We all enter into life screaming, fighting for breath.  We all die alone even if we are surrounded by our loved ones.  When he died we were all there, surrounding him.  He was too old for his age...his tears were dry- robbed by illness...but not empty...already the look in his eyes was one of loneliness.  And when he slipped into the void, it was not with a peaceful smile.  There was a look of perfect, solitary, horror.  Recognition of nothing except no one.  The lie of life, the truth of death.

Tomorrow I am supposed to officially mark the passage of another year of weary life.  Hopeful, disappointing life.  Yeah there have been good times...touching the sky, nightswimming, the power of the woman in my veins overcoming fear...but all that is temporary.  Even the memories do not bewitch anymore, only mock my unceasing emptiness. What if things had been different...what if I had given in?  What if I had been born under a different star?  What if I had stayed?  What if I had tried harder to give up?  It would probably not matter.

In the exhibition hall with the artists clamoring for attention, guiding the belle and balking the stalkers.  In the gallery where the candles flicker and the wine flows, my satin gloves curving up my arms as I smile in diplomatic courtesy.  In the sickroom where the nurses scurry and the bodily liquids spill across insterile surfaces.  In the field where the bales stretch to the horizon.  In the house with the rooms devoid of happiness.  At the sun-dappled sidewalk cafe with the suits casting interested glances, letting the ice creep into my eyes if they look long enough.  In the back room where the smoke curls and people whisper into my ear the stuff I am supposed to forget at threat of discomfort.  At the family gathering where I justify, clarify, excuse.  On the bus among Simon's ragged people and stench of abandonment.  At the truck stop where the bright lights assault my eyes and not a single person looks up.  In the cold morning as the pale sun reaches through branches alternately laden with leaves or barren of life.  At the conference where the faces are nothing but outlined disks, feeling my lips moving and even smiling graciously at the applause, while inside my heart aches in defeat.

Loneliness is the only constant.  No sense waiting for otherwise.  As in all other tough realizations, accept it and move on.  There is no way around it, it is what it is...there's no one here.

Well the darkness has a hunger that's insatiable, and the lightness has a call that's hard to hear.
- The Indigo Girls


Some people far wiser than I believe that good and evil are merely concepts... human definitions of what amounts essentially to nature itself...I don't know where the truth lies but I know it's not clear-cut, and each person must define these things for themselves. 

Since my earliest remembered thoughts, I've always known that death awaits & time in this skin is short.   I've lost countless hours just fighting to keep that knowledge under control and attempting to appreciate & enjoy whatever simple blessing I might be experiencing were I not already transfixed by the thought of the ineffably patient void.

So maybe out of subconscious penitence (i.e. that most clinging of ingrained Christian characteristics, guilt) my default setting has evolved to be extremely tolerant of others with different belief structures or lifestyles.  I consider that a positive thing & am truly glad I seem to be wired that way...the world needs tolerance.  Yet I freely acknowledge that while I never doubted the devil's existence (or the concept of evil thereof), I was long unable to accept that the concept of god/purity was viable until I realized that good and evil are symbiotic... comprised of startlingly similar energies, often existing at opposite ends of that continuum, but also overlapping at various unforeseen points between.

From my fluctuating vantage point, I lean toward the opinion that if evil is real then good must be also.  In fact, as far as humanity goes, I would actually argue that humans are born tilted toward the darkness rather than the other way around....we start out stained rather than pure and that's precisely why it's so difficult to reach nirvana/heaven/enlightenment.  Isn't it true that we often have to fight off the "bad" urges and train ourselves to behave properly, with the definition of "proper" usually being the opposite of what we actually want?  Don't the most wicked people live the longest, while those of pure heart are more prone to die young, or tragically, or unfulfilled, or all of those things?  Why is it that when it really truly counts, inevitably the path of least resistance is the one leading to darkness?

Disappointment is the most troublesome feeling I can identify...I feel it so much it would seem an indication of expectations set consistently too high...I've missed the point...I think there was a lesson that should have been learned somewhere in this mess...but I already feel the saddest part of myself turning away from whatever that truth is, giving into the weakness steadily gathering at the backs of my knees...I used to be the strongest person I know. Now all I feel is ashamed.

To love truly and undiluted, 100 proof, is to be flattened out...naked to your bones before the cosmos, concentric bulls eye rings rotating outward from your navel. I mean, why do that? It's going to turn out badly, has to turn out badly...unless you are one of the lucky few who's spared by sheer chance; maybe then it will be worth it to you. For me it just means it's a matter of time before the destruction, the disappointment. Loss. Even if you don't lose, a part of you will essentially be forced to spend the rest of your minutes waiting for the other shoe to drop, hoping with every silent fiber that the universe lets the object of your affection remain happy for as long as possible, as opposed to thoughtlessly flicking it out of your space...or even out of existence itself.

I know my own convictions on love so well, yet still my heart stubbornly follows its selfish path. I should have learned these lessons to the extent that they at least prepare me for the fall, for that hard landing. Pathetic that I'm only now recalling that the quick bitter thrust and the long painful withdrawal of the eventual disappointment, linger long after the body heals.