Most young people seem to look to music to find solace in dark or difficult times. I find this to be especially true in myself, though many of you might find my choice in music questionable, but I digress.When I am experiencing something new, especially if it is negative, I will scour through music listening to hours of audio and analyze pages of lyrics looking for the song that captures my emotion perfectly.
Why do I feel this compulsion? Is the reason the need to put my feelings into words? Am I looking for some kind of truth or solution?
I think I am trying to find truth and understanding, but the first step is to put the emotion into words. Though, I must say that I never seem to find what I am looking for in these situations. I would probably do better to try my hand at writing my own words for those emotions. That's an original idea! Though the problem is that I do not know the solution, so it is a nasty cycle of bursting emotion and frustration.
Language is a complicated concept, but it defines our humanity. That is why pain removes our humanity, because it removes our ability to form language. Instead we can only scream in agony. It would make sense that I would need to form painful emotion into words to somehow reassure myself of my own humanity.
An interesting counter point may have to do with instrumental music. There have been times when I have found certain instrumental performances to be so much more emotional than any words. Sometimes large spans of time could pass and I would almost be in a dream state. This is definitely taking a break from language of the typical sort, and maybe even taking a break from humanity. Plato would not approve.
Now I will get to the question that actually prompted me to write this post. Is there actually any truth in song lyrics? How do you know what is actually true and what will lead you to misunderstanding?
Maybe there is truth in the song for the writer, but my way of trying to find a song to fit a new emotion is fairly futile. It is probably more effective to find emotions that fit songs as you listen to the music while in a neutral emotion, and then when you feel that emotion outside of the context of the song, you can turn to it when craving a purging of that emotion.
If you can relate, please comment; I would love to hear other ideas. If not, sorry for wasting your time and sounding insane. Also my apologies if this seemed disjointed. It is late and the ideas are not fully formed.
Thanks for reading!
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