Reinventing Myself

It's no secret to anyone I don't like my appearance. At all.
So I'm trying this time. I have dropped the weight. I have the hair, and in the right colour too. My complexion has cleared up to a point that it hasn't been this good since before puberty. I have everything going for me now, so maybe it's time I start caring about how I look. Not that I didn't before... but this time I want to be one of those girls who are in control of how they look with so little effort. Though it will take a great effort for me to even get halfway there, heh.
Still. I'm going to try, for real this time.

I watched a movie with Greta Garbo earlier, "Anna Karenina". Actually, it's the first movie with her I have ever seen. Of course I knew who she was, how she looked and so on, but I've only seen her in still photographs. ... and I loved her. Really. She's got true starquality. It wasn't just about looks with her, because sure, she's got that gorgeous classic look I could die for, but there was something more. It was like whenever she appeared in a room every other actor seemed to blend into the background until she directed her attention to them. It was truly amazing.
I think I have myself a rolemodel for the first time in my life. A conscious one that is, considering I grew up actually admiring people like Traci Lords, Pamela Anderson and Christina Applegate while she was still with the Bundy's. >_< I still admire Traci Lords, but for other reasons and not so much as a rolemodel-type. (... weird how they're all blondes, huh?) But seeing Garbo I felt that I want to be like her. She's graceful, timeless, beautiful, lovely, respected and simply... flawless. I want that, but I cannot carry it the same way she does. Thus my struggle to achieve such perfection is most likely doomed from the very beginning. Although that doesn't mean that I won't try. There's no harm in trying and who knows? Maybe something good might come from it.

Memories of Music

Have you ever noticed how often music we have listened to is related to a situation or a feeling that we were having at the time?

I love music. I live for music. I have it in my blood, flowing in my veins to the rythm of my heart. I try to explain it, yet I fail everytime. I am nothing without it. Or so it feels.
I also love all kinds of music. Really, I'm not kidding. I do listen to everything. At least when speaking of genres. And I love when I get to know people who recommend music to me or gives me music that I myself wouldn't have found or perhaps even looked for (so much music, so little time). Though because of that, I also have a tendency of relating people to music. When I hear a certain song or a certain artist I remember the person who first presented them to me, or rather who made me really listen to the music. But it doesn't end there. When I speak of former aquaintances, I refer to them together with the music they introduced me to. I haven't been aware of that until this very summer actually. It happens so casual, I don't notice it myself. In the middle of a sentence, when I'm talking about something in my past it suddenly appears; "... a guy/girl named Something, who by the way was the one who got me listening to this artist/genre, blah blah..."
Some people have called me rude when I've told them about this. I think it is the opposite, because at least I remember them. Honestly, I would have forgotten a lot of those people if it weren't for the music. If I can't relate to people, if they haven't made a lasting impression, they fall out of my memory. It is a simple human mechanism that we all have. And I relate to music.

When I first hear a song, the first thing I listen to is the vocals and the lyrics (unless there's some other element that catches my attention). Not so very odd since I am a vocalist from the heart myself. Second time around, I listen to the music and in time I start focusing on different instruments that are played, one at a time. So I can't say I've heard a song until I've listened to it more than five times. And everytime I experience it in different ways until I know it. When I do, it etches itself into me and becomes a part of me, either as a memory or as a feeling. In the latter part, sometimes it doesn't matter what feeling the tune itself is carrying because there are so much emotions surging from other reasons. Those are what emotions that lingers with the song in the end, while other times it is the song itself that speaks to me.

Now, for some time now the speakers to my computers have been malfunctioning and now I have no sound at all coming from them. Some people don't bother with it anyway. Most of my musician friends wouldn't care, they prefer to play music without the aid of a computer. But I have my entire music collection within my computer. Every CD's I ever had lies in it, whilst the CD's themselves... well, most of them I have left in Kiruna. So you can see my predicament? I have no music. Well, almost no music. And that's where we get to the point.

I have a portable CD-player, which has not been doing very much since I got my mp3-player, but now I revived it. I do have some CD's with me. My favourite ones and a bunch of old CD's I made when I didn't have a mp3-player. I went through that lot yesterday, to see what I find. And I found a lot of old songs I loved. So naturally I play them.
... what I conveniently forgot though was approximately how long ago I made them. What period it was when I actually used to listen to these specific songs.

Curious?
It was five years ago, quite precisely. Doesn't tell you all that much, does it?
Five years ago I plunged into a darkness so dense I'm still not out of it. I have been crawling to get out of that pit for five years. I was already crawling before that but nothing, truly nothing, can compare with that period.
When I looked at these CD's, what songs were on them, I kind of knew how much feelings were imprinted in them, but hey, that was years ago. Doesn't matter now, I thought. So I played them. And all the memories came back. All the anxiety, the fear, the bone-deep sorrow, the itching beneath my skin that craves for blood which I have so successfully been able to ignore for so long.
I hear a certain song and I can remember what scars on my body I made to it. Not because I cut myself to music, but because I'm never without music. And I played that same CD when I did it.
I hear another song and I remember all the flashbacks of Rose I had from it that crushed me over and over. Yet another song, and I remember how it played while I unconsciously tried to drown myself when bathing. And when I hear Rogue's mournful voice wondering where his angel is, I crumble and fall to pieces. It's just too much. I can't bear it, but I can't turn it off. It still gets that powerful a hold over me, that anguish that tormented me then, after all these years. It feels almost alive, like a demon lurking in the corners of my mind just waiting for the right moment to strike. And a realization dawns upon me, filling me with a dread I haven't felt for years.

But it wasn't all that bad. I also found a CD filled with happy music my Mrii sent to me. I found a CD with mixed songs Sofi and Suss sent me, and a CD with party songs me, a friend of mine, my sister and her best friend always listened to when we were all girly and dressing up to go out. I even found the CD I brought with me first time I went to Stockholm to meet with all the crazy people I love now. ^^

That's why it hit me, how much feelings I insert into songs. I won't say that it is the song that inserts the feelings in me like that, because I don't think it works that way. Sometimes I can remember events, places, and how I felt in a certain memory as well as simple feelings. Some songs make me happy, simply because that is how they make me feel but often they make me so because I remember something that makes me feel happy. Although had I listened to the very same song while I feel down that is what I'll remember. Despite what you may think, the songs filling me with that anxiety is not just 'emo'-songs or depressing ones. A lot of them are filled with that happy upbeat feeling, but to me they are filled with pain and mental distress. It works the other way around too. Listening to an incredible depressing song at the right time or in a good company, I feel happy everytime I hear it. Which might be why some people gives me those weird glances when I walk around in a store that's playing the most depressing song ever on the radio and I just smile, listening to it.

I heard once that scientists claim that the sense we relate most of our memories to is smell. I don't really doubt that, nor contradict it, but it feels a little off to me since my memories are more connected to music than to smells. Though since music isn't a sense and my hearing is severly lacking memorability due to my short attention-span, I won't argue. :)