Music, Simply

Music isn't something I can easily write about. It's so easy to slip into the familiar cliches. Words are beautiful, wondrous things, but music isn't meant for words. Words can pierce and cut, tear and soothe, wax eloquent and snap short. But they can't do anything for music. Music is words, the best ones, ones like "indelible" and "vagabond" but with the words stripped away. Music is emotion, trapped and reduced to its simplest form, packaged and sent out to the masses. Music is more. Sometimes it's being with your friends, dancing with them, sharing a moment of simple joy, "Banana Pancakes" by Jack Johnson. Other times it's forever ago lying on a cheap carpet, staring at the bumps on the ceiling, inexplicably crying while listening to the live in L.A. performance of John Mayer's "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room". Music is catharsis. Sometimes it's "Spread Too Thin" by The Dirty Heads and everything feels crazy but alright and sometimes it's dirty rap or hip hop or electronic or Whatever but it doesn't matter if it lets you feel.

Some songs are like fuzzy slippers. You don't wear them for a while and then you slip them on and exhale, like you've been holding your breath this whole time. You know every inch of them, and they fit you perfectly. Here are some of my fuzzy slipper songs:
     The Blower's Daughter - Damien Rice
     Slow Dancing in a Burning Room - John Mayer
     Mad World - Gary Jules
     Skinny Love - Bon Iver
     Gymnopedie No. 1 - Erik Satie
     Hide and Seek - Imogen Heap
     The Lady is a Tramp - Tom Bennet and Lady Gaga
     Gravity - John Mayer
     The Trapeze Swinger - Iron and Wine
If any song is poetry it's "The Trapeze Swinger".
A verse:

Please remember me, my misery
And how it lost me all I wanted
Those dogs that love the rain
and chasing trains
The colored birds above there running
In circles round the well
and where it spells
On the wall behind St. Peter
So bright on cinder gray
in spray paint
"Who the hell can see forever?"

This is my song. It's almost ten minutes long, but it never approaches boring. I can fall asleep, write, clean, or do homework to this song. It's melancholy, inspiring, bitter, hopeful, regretful, relaxing, stunning, and just perfect. It's simple and complex and there's an unexpected slide whistle feature there at the end that sounds like the croaking of a swing-set; the perfect touch of nostalgia.