#13

"Sometimes when you win, you lose." Or, A Cluster of Bad Timing

Does anyone remember that line from What Dreams May Come? I do. It's a constant reminder to stay grounded and to always be humble. Although sometimes that's easier said than done. I can be on top of the world and feel invincible, but I must always remember that below me lies the same shit I deal with day in and day out- My own personal demons. They are always there to keep me in check and to remind me that every day is to be treated as a gift, albeit a very subpar one. Almost like getting socks for Christmas. Sure, you're thankful, but at the same time you feel cheated. It's only my ego, and one day I'll learn to kick it to the curb.

I recently was a cast member in a production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The connections I made and the fun I had with all the cast and crew will be with me forever. However, if I have to watch that movie at all any time soon I could quite possibly commit suicide. The upside to it is I have memorized pretty much every character's part in the movie. So if I do it again I will be prepared.

Before the show there was a performance from the Florida Dance Theatre. The dancer's characters were everyone's preferred occult figure for this year- the vampire. Vampires are the new black what with all the buzz with Twilight and True Blood being big hits. If you are a fan of those I suggest to you the movie Let The Right One In. Great foreign vampire film and definitely worth your time to watch it.

The dance the FDT performed moved me, which is a rare thing. Dancing doesn't do much for me, but this one was different. The dancers were amazing and it was wonderfully choreographed. It wasn't just that though, it was the music they used that brought it all together. The songs they chose were a perfect fit and I realized that they would make a great addition to 5SIAR. The dance, the songs, and the mood they put me in (which was suffice it to say not a happy one) compelled me to want to write this. That, and, well, a skirmish with a friend. All of those things grabbed me by the arm, sat me down, put my fingers on the keyboard and said "tell us about it." You asked for it. So here it is.

"Us" - Regina Spektor

Us - Regina Spektor

Scene #1: Man and woman meet. Man and woman fall in love. Man and woman are happy.

The opening number to the performance was a track from Spektor's Soviet Kitsch but was also put on the soundtrack to this summer's indie feel good/feel sad movie 500 Days Of Summer. It's your typical grab your lady by the hand and fall in love kind of song. There does, however, seem to be some kind of underlying message of love costing more than what it is worth. Yes, I'm putting a price tag on the emotion because in the greater scheme of things love is the thing that dictates pretty much everything in the universe. Or, at least, something on par with it such as gravity or magnetism. Somehow, someway, attraction is our life's path and that was the center on this part of the dance performance. Two people meet and they fall in love, and it's grand. It's grand because it spreads to others. That wonderful feeling is truly contagious. So much that people will use "Us" as a blueprint for their love.

As lovers rise, in time they eventually fall. Like Icarus, the lover flies too close to the sun, is burned, and falls back down. This is the nearest approximation of falling in and out of love I can conjure. That is the way of things. The path of love is not without its pitfalls and hiccups. Giant sacrifices are made for the other person all for the sake of keeping the connection alive when it's already on life support. Some people sign a prenuptial before getting married, what they should be signing are DNR forms. Do Not Resuscitate.

We all have this hope and dream that love will conquer all and I honestly think that is our first mistake in love. We can't count on it to fix everything because sometimes it does more harm than good. You know that old saying that one man's trash is another's treasure? Well that can also be reversed when it comes to matters of the heart. One man's treasure is another's trash. The shine that was there becomes tarnished and rusted to the point of taking the easy way out and throwing it away instead of polishing it. The same analogy can be used with two people in love. The feeling becomes tarnished from wear and tear (countless fights and disagreements). It becomes so broken that it is thrown away with no chance of survival or revival. Yeah, we've heard it before, love is a battlefield, and we are the soldiers at arms. And yes, sometimes peace treaties can be made, but most of the time the two sides just lay down their weapons and walk away from each other.

OK, now that I've depressed all of you I will say that beyond all of the bullshit and excrement that goes along with falling for someone it really is a great feeling when it all works out. When all the little pieces fit into place perfectly (which is more rare than one might think) it becomes something more than your standard boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in and out of love kind of story. The explosion from this occurrence echoes across our visible and invisible universe dictating courses of action and ultimately becoming the pebble thrown into our pond.

"Emotion Sickness" - Sliverchair

Emotion Sickness - Silverchair

Scene #2: Woman runs away. Hides. Man is attacked. Dies.

Silverchair- A band that has struggled to escape the label of 90's grunge relic to become something of their own; Something a bit more than the dropped D tuning they stole from Helmet. Well, it took a few albums, and from the sound of their most recent release Young Modern, they have come into their own and finally have shed all the Frogstomp stigma left over from their teenage years. In between Frogstomp and Young Modern there was their third album Neon Ballroom- an album that saw a band trying to shed its skin by exploring new territory in a soon to be post-grunge world, yet still maintaining a kinship to their roots of Nirvana-esque antagonism.

The bands and their intentions aren't the point of this issue but the meaning behind the songs are instead. What the songs represent in the dance routine and what that means to me and what I feel and what I think the rest of the world feels. Simple, right? Wrong.

With love comes struggle to keep that love alive. People say, "If it's meant to be then it should be easy!" No, it's never easy. Because we are all so different from one another and complex no one couple in this world will ever have it easy. There are too many nuances to one's personality that prevents that. You're going to have bumps in the road. You're going to get emotionally sick which inevitably leads to being physically sick. Why do you think after one spouse passes away the other follows shortly after. People die from broken hearts, and it happens more often than not.

We can either heal or become ill from overdoses of feeling. How do you feel when you're falling for someone? Invincible, right? Like you could take on one hundred Osama Bin Ladens or Rush Limbaughs and take them all down with one swift gesture. You're on top of the world. Unstoppable, even, yet that is only one end of the string. If there's a positive, there's always a negative.

What happens when love dies? Not only does depression and heartache follow, but now and again a physical malady as well. For instance, what I stated before, someone dying from a broken heart. There is no medical reason why this happens, nor can we really explain it. It just...happens. It amazes me how well connected the mind and body are with one another. Our body has responses to a wide range of emotion. If we're nervous, we sweat. If we're happy, we seem to "glow". If we're angry or threatened, adrenaline kicks in. And if we're sad, we feel nauseous, drained, and unable to properly function. Trouble arises when we lose control of our bodies and let emotion become the pilot. We are rash and we do and say things we wouldn't normally consider doing or saying and it always gets us in trouble.

As for our lovers- the woman leaves the man to be free and experience more only to return to find him broken and expired. Drained of life from the separation.

"The Fragile" - Nine Inch Nails

The Fragile - Nine Inch Nails

Scene #3: Woman returns to find man deceased. Commences to repair him.

When we cannot mend ourselves from what we may consider to be irreparable damage, we have friends and loved ones there to help us along. We break and those close to us are there to sweep up the pieces and help put them back together in some kind of recognizable order. This, of course, is achieved by heavy boozing and late-night drunk dials to the breaker. Luckily I've never been on the receiving end of one of these notorious phone calls of liquored belligerence, nor have I ever had the reason to make one. My life is still young though. I'm sure at some point someone will do something to warrant me drunk dialing them to blast obscenities and curses at them all while my friends are carrying my near de-hydrated and collapsed body to the bathroom to vomit some more. Yes, heartbreak sucks and who better than to school us about it than King Heartbreak himself, Trent Reznor.

The first thing that sticks out in this song is the use of tambourine to sound like chains being dragged. The chains are the focus of the song as them being the object holding down the main character with Trent supposedly being the one making the promise of not letting her succumb to darkness. This of course is my literal translation of it and is more than likely wrong, or is it? Sometimes a song's literal meaning is more often than not the right one. I get so tired of songwriters beating around the bush with in regards to their lyrics. Sometimes they are so abstract and distant that it's difficult to identify with the song which becomes turn off. I understand some level of mystery and privacy for one's feelings, but don't jump the shark with what you're trying to say to sound cool in front of the kids!

Ahem...

Getting back to the subject at hand- Hearts get broken, and then they are mended. It is a process as natural as the sun rising and setting. We win some, we lose some and occasionally both happen at the same time. Love never really dies. It just gets transformed into something else. It evolves. We have to stick by this concept (me included) or else we're all destined to keep falling down until we aren't able to pick ourselves back up. Friends or no friends, it is ultimately up to us to oil the machine and make it all work. But it never hurts to have a little help from your mates.

"Let Go" - Frou Frou

Let Go - Frou Frou

Scene #4: Man is turned to vampire and is healed to spend eternity with woman.

Yet another one-hit indie soundtrack wonder for this issue. This one comes from the Garden State Soundtrack and in all honesty I haven't heard anything released from Frou Frou since. I'm OK with that, too. I've never heard any of her other songs and judging from this one I don't feel like I would be missing anything that's a masterpiece. In this case the music isn't the meaning, it's the message. I believe I've stated that once before, actually. A lot of what I've been doing lately feels like I've done it all before. There's a little bit of past in everything, I guess, or else now wouldn't be the future. That will make more sense later. I promise.

So yes, it's the message. The words, the lyrics, what is being said, which in all actuality can be summed up by the title "Let Go." Let life take over. Don't worry about what is going to happen because then you will spend all of your free time pining over the very worst that may or may not transpire. You will not get to enjoy conversations with friends or ice cream with your children. You will not have your first kiss with someone. You will not catch the 2009 Tampa Bay Buccaneers win their first game of the season. No, you won't experience any of these instances because you were too busy buried inside your own head conjuring up expectations in life that, again, may not happen. Let go. Let whatever will happen happen. It may be what you're looking for.

Sometimes it may seem that at every corner you find a brick wall. Something to impede your forward progress. You can't let that stop you. You are your own worst enemy in this situation. Don't succumb to failure. Stand back up, turn around, and just go another direction. And if that too has another brick wall, well, then, that's life. There's positive and negative, opportunity and brick walls, perfect timing and bad timing....bad timing. People call it fate, or at least some do. The others still believe that we create our own destiny. As for me, I've been leaning more toward the bad timing theory for quite a while now. Sometimes things aren't supposed to happen for a reason. It's tragic though when a person's life becomes nothing but bad timing. However it's sometimes comforting to know that your life has a hand in determining so many other outcomes in other people's lives as well. You almost can't be mad about it. If it was meant to happen that way, bad timing or not, then that's what it was supposed to be. A cluster of bad timing.

Was it fate that determined man and woman being together forever? I honestly don't know, but I know I had a part in it all. This is also why there isn't a fifth song. Whatever it will all be - Winning, losing, good or bad timing - we just don't know. The song hasn't played yet.

"Untitled" - Unknown

PRESS PLAY. Don't let life pass you by.