Requiem

I've been falling asleep since christmas with the song "goodbye my lover" by James Blunt on infinite repeat. I do this because I like the song, and I like falling asleep with the musical reminder that things must end echoing through my room.
I have been doing this specifically since christmas because the cd was a christmas present from my little brother, thanks again, Colin.

Before I got this present I had Faure's requiem on the changer, and before this a selection of songs that signified the general feeling of loss and the ending of things. Anything from "Blame it on the wheatherman" by b*witched to "Katie" by Mary black, using "My Immortal" and "Schips in the night" as stop-overs.

Requiems, by their very nature pieces of music written with that which is no longer there in mind, are in my opinion the most beautifull musical expressions in the language of notes. Loss, nostalgy, joy, memory, all that was associated with the world that is no more will be easily felt in the music.
Wagner is still bombastic in death, one imagines an afterlife filled with large-breasted and horny-helmeted women on horseback that ferry across worlds to bring true heroes to their rightfull restingplace, as much as a rest can be had with largebreasted women near a recently defeated warrior, that is, it gives a whole new meaning to "rigor mortis", I'm sure.
Mozart's mass for the dead brim with anger, the feable last spasms of a genius with many more songs to write but not the strength to write them, an anger with the world that he seems to want to take with him to the next. If I ever meet a supreme being and he cites "that damn COMPOSER" as the reason he still can't see straight out of one eye and the scar across his nose I will very much not be surprised. I will also not be tempted to hold back because he was already torn a new one by a diminuitive austrian Wolf but that's my beef with Him..
Faure's mass is a softer piece of music. Sad, but accepting, it signifies the last part of the healing cycle...acceptance, sadnes, rest. The idea that no matter what might have happened before, it is now over, perhaps to soon, perhaps finally, but over nonetheless and the surrender to the situation brings rest. There are [arts of the music that bring tears to my eyes not because of their sadness, but because they personify the world I want to leave behind, a sad world, but ready for a future and perhaps a bit better for the turmoil that is now passed.

Songs about what is yet to be are usually filled with hope and looking forward to some imagined future. They have their disillusion built into their very fabric, as it were, but those that write about what is not there but that has been there have no such trouble. Hope may figure in the notes, but it is a hope for a repeat, not an empty hope for what may not be. Whatever the music is supposed to make you feel, it is a closed circuit, it tugs your heart not to what might be but to what was, and the past is written. It might be gone, but it has filled it's reguirements and is allowed to be gone.

These thoughts fill my head as the music swirls around my bedroom. My rooms are sparsely decorated, perhaps a bit chilly to the eye, but I like it that way, and listening to the music of no-more is a way to appreciate the moments that are there. Friends who stay over, or who don' stay over but know about my slight penchant for sadness are amazed that when things are going right I still want to listen to sad songs, and I can understand them, a bit.
The music gives me a sense of the passing of time, of the fragility of any situation. In my opinions beauty is at it's most striking with the hand of death poised above it, and anything is more poignant when it is about to end.
And everything ends. And the musical reminder of this makes me all the more appreciative of the situation when it is still there.

Tomorrow night a group of friends will gather at my house for a few games and an evening of general merriment. Of these, most people could call me at four a.m. to tell me whatever they want to tell me, even if it is only to tell me that they were awake and wanted to spread the joy. But after this night, they will leave. And the knowledge of this makes me want to live through the time when they are there all the more intensely.
Life is short, and even the most beautiful of moments will in the end pass. Listening to the music of this passing before the passing occures reminds me to enjoy it before the inevitable happens.

And please, whoever reads this, find Faure.. the music is sublime, and it is a great way to fall asleep :)