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After Dolores O'Riordan died I started thinking about how many female artists/bands/"voices" there were in the 90s and how that all just withered up and died in like 1998 when we had literally nothing but Evanescence for like 5 years, and how even today when the media is celebrating women in music and encouraging it on all levels, it's still nowhere even close to what it was in the 1990s when it was a topic that practically nobody was even talking about. It's easy to romanticize that decade to a really dishonest degree and I'm probably guilty of that but objectively speaking, rock was nowhere near as male-dominated then as it is now.
I also started thinking about "Linger" and realizing how beautiful of a song it was and started going through that process of trying to reconcile how something like that could have been just totally lost on me for so long, especially when I was that perfect age to receive it and feel it and let it change me but instead just tuned it out like aural wallpaper while waiting for who knows what and how many legitimately awful alt rock songs to come on the radio instead. Most of the writers/Internet people in mourning for her will try to suggest that they absorbed this song and lived its truths on some deep, life-changing level and in a setting like they were laying on their roof with a boombox and gazing at the stars while contemplating her words or something are just full of it (these anecdotes exist, I promise). That said there was no excuse for me not having a moment with that song that was greater than hearing it in a movie, a moment I remember because my brother snuck a Coke into the theater and accidentally kicked it over at a scene when this song was playing, causing the empty can to roll down towards the front row of the theater, the sound resonating inside the aluminum cylinder that caused the sound of our crime to echo throughout the theater for an agonizing ten seconds that felt like an eternity. If this is impossible to imagine, stadium seating really wasn't a thing back then like it is practically everywhere now.
This isn't about "Linger" but a song I have less to say about but have had some moments with lately that have been...deep, I guess.
It is difficult to hear this song today and conceive of a world where it was a mainstream hit that barely missed the Top 40, but there it was. I don't remember if I "liked" it or not. I can't imagine that I really did because it was not a song that a stupid kid like me was supposed to understand or relate to, even as I look back now and can't believe this didn't do something to me.
I want to hold the hand inside you
I want to take a breath that's true
I look to you and I see nothing
I look to you to see the truth
You live your life, you go in shadows
You'll come apart and you'll go blind
Some kind of night into your darkness
Colors your eyes with what's not there
The fact that this didn't move me ought to be enough to dispel any romantic notions about myself as a "literary" or even a sensitive kid. Music meant the world to me but this is proof that I never understood it or that its magic could truly breach my truly perverted understanding of the world or myself or shake me from my superstitious, dull-eyed, asexual stupor that I just stumbled around in with no true curiosity or hunger for real knowledge or belief that I was entitled to. I had no connections with the world outside of my circle of friends and the landlocked, redneck school that comprised my inescapable, (thankfully) pre-Internet world. This song was a life preserver and I never grabbed it. Like "Linger," I took it for granted, a gift I refused because I never knew what was really good for me. And maybe none of us do at that age.
There are some songs and some bands that I could compare this to but I think you know who they are and I bet you can guess how I feel about them compared to this.
I am thankful to have this song in my life now but it carries with it ghosts from the past that I cannot shake, a sense of lost time and a world that was pure that I can never experience again and was never fully conscious of when it was my complete and total reality.
I try not to get too nostalgic for the past, or at least when I do I try not to communicate it in something embarrassing like this, but maybe this is a fate no one with a true fondness for music new or old can really escape, so maybe it's not shameless, but it sure as fuck looks stupid when it was coming from our parents pining for the days of Blue Oyster Cult or whatever.
It's really sad that rock music just died, I mean all things take their course but it really feels like culture just gives us less to choose from now.
I know this is pretentious and fell far short of my goals but that will happen and it's probably not the end of the world.
I also started thinking about "Linger" and realizing how beautiful of a song it was and started going through that process of trying to reconcile how something like that could have been just totally lost on me for so long, especially when I was that perfect age to receive it and feel it and let it change me but instead just tuned it out like aural wallpaper while waiting for who knows what and how many legitimately awful alt rock songs to come on the radio instead. Most of the writers/Internet people in mourning for her will try to suggest that they absorbed this song and lived its truths on some deep, life-changing level and in a setting like they were laying on their roof with a boombox and gazing at the stars while contemplating her words or something are just full of it (these anecdotes exist, I promise). That said there was no excuse for me not having a moment with that song that was greater than hearing it in a movie, a moment I remember because my brother snuck a Coke into the theater and accidentally kicked it over at a scene when this song was playing, causing the empty can to roll down towards the front row of the theater, the sound resonating inside the aluminum cylinder that caused the sound of our crime to echo throughout the theater for an agonizing ten seconds that felt like an eternity. If this is impossible to imagine, stadium seating really wasn't a thing back then like it is practically everywhere now.
This isn't about "Linger" but a song I have less to say about but have had some moments with lately that have been...deep, I guess.
It is difficult to hear this song today and conceive of a world where it was a mainstream hit that barely missed the Top 40, but there it was. I don't remember if I "liked" it or not. I can't imagine that I really did because it was not a song that a stupid kid like me was supposed to understand or relate to, even as I look back now and can't believe this didn't do something to me.
I want to hold the hand inside you
I want to take a breath that's true
I look to you and I see nothing
I look to you to see the truth
You live your life, you go in shadows
You'll come apart and you'll go blind
Some kind of night into your darkness
Colors your eyes with what's not there
The fact that this didn't move me ought to be enough to dispel any romantic notions about myself as a "literary" or even a sensitive kid. Music meant the world to me but this is proof that I never understood it or that its magic could truly breach my truly perverted understanding of the world or myself or shake me from my superstitious, dull-eyed, asexual stupor that I just stumbled around in with no true curiosity or hunger for real knowledge or belief that I was entitled to. I had no connections with the world outside of my circle of friends and the landlocked, redneck school that comprised my inescapable, (thankfully) pre-Internet world. This song was a life preserver and I never grabbed it. Like "Linger," I took it for granted, a gift I refused because I never knew what was really good for me. And maybe none of us do at that age.
There are some songs and some bands that I could compare this to but I think you know who they are and I bet you can guess how I feel about them compared to this.
I am thankful to have this song in my life now but it carries with it ghosts from the past that I cannot shake, a sense of lost time and a world that was pure that I can never experience again and was never fully conscious of when it was my complete and total reality.
I try not to get too nostalgic for the past, or at least when I do I try not to communicate it in something embarrassing like this, but maybe this is a fate no one with a true fondness for music new or old can really escape, so maybe it's not shameless, but it sure as fuck looks stupid when it was coming from our parents pining for the days of Blue Oyster Cult or whatever.
It's really sad that rock music just died, I mean all things take their course but it really feels like culture just gives us less to choose from now.
I know this is pretentious and fell far short of my goals but that will happen and it's probably not the end of the world.
