Hop on your rainbow, and leap into oblivion.

There's an infamous question that is: Would you rather be blind or deaf?

When someone asked me it a while back, I didn't know. Well now I do, and if that person is reading these very words, they will have their answer.

I'd rather be blind. By far. Simply because music is the biggest part of my life.
Music is everything to me.

But wait hang on, I'm not talking about the music you hear on the radio or during music theory class.
When I listen to classical music like Mozart, Bach or Beethoven, and I see tons of music fanatics around me drooling at its so called "beauty", I feel perplexed.
OK fine, that kind of music is majestic. Beautiful in many ways.
And being a musician myself I can tell you that those boys knew a shitload about how to change key or finish with a perfect cadence.

But this is the catch: there's no human implication in it. Even in opera, while that fat lady in a tight dress sings, I can't help but feel uneasy and insensitive to the gibberish she is crooning.
Mozart, Bach and Beethoven knew every corner and every crack in the system and the rules of music. They just didn't express emotion explicitly enough.

I know many classical music fanatics will disagree with me, and I'm sure that a different mind would look at it a different way. But this is my blog. It's my mind. It's the view I'm getting.

The music that means a lot to me is not what Bach spouted out to finish another predictable symphony. The music I'm talking about is music that touches you. Gives you the chills. Frightens you because you can remember exactly where you were and how you felt the first moment when you heard that heart-moving riff or chorus.
It reminds you of that time, and ultimately opens you the gates of a different world with different rules. Some world, (like I've talked about before in A Thousand Vacancies), where everything is stripped off except for your soul. And your emotions inflate and invade the sky, forcing you to acknowledge them.

And then you feel some kind of connection with what the artist, singer or band, is expressing. That gives me the chills.

I, for one, have lead a life that has been guided by music. Now my taste is so precise, so deep, that I can listen to a song over and over and not get bored, because that song plays a story in my head.

Many songs have given me the chills, because of their power, softness, darkness or beauty. One song that I just feel I have to mention is Alexisonfire's "Pulmonary Archery". It is a song that appears ugly to most, because most of the vocals are screamed.
However, the extraordinary guitar and bass introduction is just mesmerizing. I still don't understand the full meaning of the lyrics, but just that introduction reminds me of a time of my life, that's probably too personal, and too weird to talk about, because it haunts me still to this day.

If I was deaf, I wouldn't be able to hear the beautiful caress of the violin, the beady touch of the piano, or the furry vibration of the bass guitar. I couldn't hear the birds sing melodies no one listens to, or the presidents lead nations with their microphones, or the children innocently laughing at other people's misfortune.
I wouldn't be able to hear the entire world talking at the same time, distorting words, drowning compliments, amplifying insults. I wouldn't be able to hear every last person on this earth trying to raise their voice higher, just for the sake of power.

Now that I think of it, being deaf is as bad as being blind. But sometimes I just have to feel that being isolated from a world like this isn't such of a disadvantage. Being in your own world, far from the disaster the collective world has become.

We all live in our own private worlds, but we all desperately try to stain other people's worlds with out territory.

Just like I'm doing right now. With you.

Before I go, I'll leave you with the lyrics to one of the greatest modern rock songs ever made.
This is the crack in the wall.
This is the break in the fall.
This is meaning.
Listen to this next time you're thinking of grooving to Kesha. And maybe, just maybe, you'll change.

Pulmonary Archery
by Alexisonfire

It’s never too late to be early
Or to try and maintain some scrap of
Integrity and certainty I guess.

My fingers are blistered and bleeding
There’s no longer discomfort you brought me.

But I wont apologize, and 1977
Was a long time ago. I don’t care.

I don't care how things were
And I won't apologize.
I won't apologize.
Fuck you.

The Alamo has been penetrated
And there is little hope for the white man
So hop on your rainbow, ride it

My fingers are blistered and bleeding
There’s no longer discomfort you brought me.

So hop on your rainbow, and leap into oblivion.
For all I care you can be early or late, whatever.