A Song That I Can Play On An Instrument | And I Wonder

When I started hanging around musicians all the time, one would have thought that my intense interest in music as well as whatever potential I’d shown in that direction would have manifested in me, you know, learning a fucking instrument. But I didn’t.

I feinted in that direction a few times, most notably writing some lyrics for a project that I wanted to start with my roommate. No one ever really saw them, and I’ve not pulled them out in about seven years because I fear that they are the epitome of terrible. I was 20, after all, and I can’t think of much good that happened when I was 20.

So, I sat around, a band aide more than anything else. I’d help cart equipment around, give whoever might need it the occasional ride to practice, go to shows, do the whole thing except play an instrument.

I’ll never not wonder what might have happened if I’d pushed it then. We all know by now that I am a shameless, if not talented, singer. Add in some actual working musical ability and maybe I’d have a whole different art that I was pursuing, or at least some other way to express myself, like Marc Fort.

But I don’t. So I play Rock Band.

I’ve spent a lot of time with Rock Band. The way I play games is not the way a lot of people play games. I am a serious completist when it comes to such things, wanting to reach every goal set for me and whatever else I only set for myself. This sometimes results in a marathon gaming session marked by a masturbatory intensity so complete that I alienate those around me to the point of anger.

So, yeah, that’s me and video games.

Those tendencies made me, in the end, very good at RB drums. I learned how to play (sort of) more than a few of the more popular songs of all time.

That’s including “Everlong”, one of the greatest songs ever, and one of the toughest to drum. But, sadly, I can only get through it on hard. Those sixteenths give me a hell of a time.

I could probably learn to play real drums, having learned some of the basics through this game. But I probably won’t.

Just another example of wasted potential for me in a lifetime full of them.

A Song That I Listen To When I’m Happy | Headlights Pointed At the Dawn

I have a weird relationship with the Smashing Pumpkins. I can barely stand some of their (qualitatively) best work, but some of their least palatable I find endlessly fascinating. They’re a band that definitely defined a fairly significant chunk of my musical awakening, both for their music in and of itself and, more tragically, for the fact that they were the girl to whom I sang Depeche Mode’s favorite band.

The fact that I use that word, “tragically”, and mean it makes me probably a very pathetic individual. If not pathetic, then at least sad. But that’s not where we are.

“1979″. A song that I don’t think I am capable of listening to unless I’m in a good mood.

This is different than a song that actively makes me happy; while I suppose it’s theoretically capable of achieving that, it’s never really been given the chance. It’s not sneaky that way; I know it and listen to it as a happy song. That means, unfortunately, that whenever it comes up and I’m not in the mood for it, whether I’m listening to Mellon Collie or have my music on random or even if I’m just driving around in Grand Theft Auto, I’ll pass it over.

It’s just… happy. It’s difficult to explain the why, but it’s easy to explain the feeling. The first time I heard it, I thought of the title and flashed instantly back to Bryan Adams’ “Summer of ’69“, which is a song about young and dumb and having fun more than anything else for me. That connection, “Summer of ’69″ to “1979″, seemed like the logical connection to me, a generational shift.

The song itself backs me up, at least in my mind. It’s driving and bouncy and a little ominous. Rather like my adolescence, I think. The video supports all that, too; it is, literally, kids running around and having a good time. I don’t know if I understood the metaphors when I was 13 and 14; I know I’ve come to understand a lot of what the Pumpkins were on about a lot better now than I did then.

But “1979″ isn’t ever going to get that chance. It lives in its little capsule for me, a little place for me to go when I remember that I’m young and dumb and having fun, no matter how much I feel otherwise sometimes.

It’s a little way for me to never grow up.