I guess I'm not alone in this experience as I know it's something that has, in itself, been sung about in the "strumming my pain with his fingers" song... Y'know the one... (Frustratingly, I can only think of The Fugees - with their irritating 'one time' spin on it- though I first knew the original version by __________fill in the blank_____).
THAT song tells of someone's shock and disbelief at hearing a young boy singing their "whole life with his words". The narrator (do songs HAVE narrators?) feels that his or her secret pain has been exposed, as though the boy has opened up her letters and "read each one aloud".
Interesting that the song expresses a sense of the agony that can come from being 'known' in an intimate way, of being revealed. The narrator prays that the boy will finish, suggesting that it is absolutely unbearable.
I wonder if the agony was in being known or in being faced with his/her own pain.
Perhaps a mixture.
I digress. I actually wanted to write about the very opposite reaction to the one I've just discussed.
I wasn't listening to the radio I had on as I was driving today but somehow the words of a song I've never heard, pushed their way into my head.
As lyrics sometimes do (and despite the fact I'm not completely sold on the song as a whole) they made something in me feel a little bit heard and understood and realised.
It's odd how a part of you can suddenly and unexpectedly be given a voice through a medium which has no knowledge of your existence, let alone experience.
I guess it's a testimony to the human condition and to the fact that in ways we don't necessarily ever get to experience wholly, we are never quite alone.
Praying won't do it
Hating won't do it
Drinking won't do it
Fighting won't knock you out
Of my head
Hiding won't hide it
Smiling won't hide it
Like I ain't tried it
Everyone's tried it now
And failed somehow
So when you gonna let me
When you gonna let me out - Out
And if you know
How do you get up from an all time low
I'm in pieces
Seems like peace is
The only thing I'll never know
How do you get up
Get up
‘Cos driving won't do it
Flying won't do it
Denying won't do it
Crying won't drown it out
Not really a song of hope or anything, but there may be something ever so slightly comforting in hearing another pose the questions that you have so often asked in the dead of night.
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