Scar tissue that I wish you saw

I suppose at the moment, I'm figuring I'm more likely to share my lonely view with the birds rather than a mate or a community to belong to. Ah, but that's mostly just the depression talking, and a good way to take the edge off that old bug is...

Music...because music rocks.

Let's start it up with:
1. Scar Tissue - Red Hot Chilli Peppers from their classic album Blood Sugar Sex Magic. A delicate song, with immense feeling, but a gentle acceptance. It well captures that sad but understanding attitude of being alone, not by anyone's fault but just by circumstance. The lyrics sketch a picture of a man striving to end that loneliness with romance, but accepting his current failure and looking a bit gloomily at his continued efforts. Then there's that guitar rift that cuts in the middle right into your soul. It's the signal that this reluctant acceptance doesn't come without a passionate protest, but the rift never bursts into an electronic fury as it seems tempted to at times, as the acceptance wins out, but is intertwined with sorrow that the man cannot shake, and which lingers in your heart long after the song has ceased in your ears.

And here's the AMV from the good folks at FLCL. The hyper-energy of FLCL somewhat clashes with the meditative song, but FLCL's combination of humor and darkness, joy and pain, psuedo-philosophy and psuedo-pop matches well the sweet and bitter strains, that look at the birds as brothers, if only to express an alienation from the rest of the world.

But don't let that alienation get you down, because even with that you can still be singing...

2. Tubthumping by Chumbawamba, a great song with a marvelous simplicity in its energy and sentiment (the lyrics too to a degree), but also a marvelous complexity its multiple competing parts and different voices and different tones and...

DUDE: I GET KNOCKED DOWN AND I GET UP AGAIN YOU AIN'T NEVER GOING TO KEEP ME DOWN

You can't stop the music when it hits you that true and strong. Especially when it goes well with a lovely anime called Love Hina. While this anime may not be the best in the harem anime genre, it is a quintessential example, with a hero with a never-say-die attitude and an always-say-die luck which matches the song as well (plus Love Hina has plenty of examples of people drinking heavily which also hits the bells of the tubthumping way (oh I could explain to you what tubthumping means, but I'm not going to))

But to mix it up a bit, as I am inclined to, let's take the energy of the second and the bittersweet of the first and we end up with something close to...

3. Lovefool by the Cardigans - The essential sentiment of the artist in love, rejected but so broken by the lost that she's willing to cling to any thing her love can give her... Well, it's a classic. The tone switches amazingly seemlessly between honestly distraught and flippant to a degree where you can't tell whether you're being too cool for love or too in love to be cool, all you know is you're out of sorts and you don't know what to do and if only you could just have the illusion of love...well, that touches a bit too close honestly. Let's move along...

4. That's right Move Along by the All-American Rejects. This song has a decent deal of lyrical/musical complexity, but not a huge amount. It's biggest claim is the driving push of its energy. And then there's the sentiment, and then there's just the way the voice and music mixes excellently with the sentiment, because it is the loser yelp and the semi-emo, sort-of-punk rock jangle, yeah, these are the All-American Rejects, but isn't being a reject part of being an American? And isn't it glorious?

This AMV might not hit all the right notes. Sometimes the images are a little too spot on, sometimes they're just cool images without the right sentiment, but what the video editor got here is the need for an immense variation of imagery and colors to hit that energy flow perfectly. Plus the characters, like all good heroes, got a nice loser-y look from some angles, and you gotta love a loser...

Because losers are the ones who know how to rock.

I think that's the sentiment to end the night on, and if the loneliness ever gets too hard, just remember music is awesome. It won't take away the pain, but meh, pains not so bad and music, as stated before, is awesome.

So take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.