jem on jém

[ENTRY 019]

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‘I always listen to the music but never the lyrics’ is a sentiment I’ve been coming back to often, usually while combing through the discography of whatever chosen artist I’m currently up to on my comprehensive Google sheet.

I’ll put on an album to listen to in full, but no matter the context or environment, whether on a walk or at my desk, I can’t help but slowly sink into a state that is simultaneously engrossed in the sounds and wholly indifferent to the words. I’m influenced by what’s happening sonically, how a song is produced, the rhythm, the instruments, and a few more relevant choice adjectives, but there is always a struggle to engage on a deeper level when it comes to what’s actually being said. The intent of a work beyond a surface-level understanding is something I struggle to grasp.

Thinking about this frustration longer than a minute has opened my eyes to how this wailing inability to engage with things deeply spreads and seeps into cracks all over my clay body.

This used to happen a lot, and admittedly still does to this day, with The Movies. With how much I can pick up on the surface: the visual language and sound landscape, versus all the heavy lifting the script may be doing underneath. The unravelling intricacies of interpersonal dialogue and the conversations between art, artists and the real world are what I can get hung up on. I can always understand when something ‘feels’ important and acknowledge that there is a weight behind the textual elements presented before me, but my curiosity or willingness to learn is outpaced by…

I don’t know. Genuinely.

A while ago, I would have pinned the blame on some variation of ‘my stupid brain’ or some weird root cause of equally unproductive value. By now, the tolerance I’ve built for this exhaustion I feel towards this specific version of a self-piloted antagonistic force is near bulletproof.

What I can safely rely on now is how much of my perspective is my own, whether I like it or not. People will react to me on a spectrum, of their own accord, and decide whether they feel the same way as me, but it will never be the exact same combination of characteristics shaped by my biases, experiences, perceptions, etc. It’s because of this reasoning that I’ve afforded myself the freedom to say, ‘I don’t need to know all this, man.’ I used to refute this so dismissively, a callous labelling of behaviour as me being anti-intellectual and giving up on engaging my brain. But when a great deal of time passes after believing something so negative about oneself, I inevitably can’t help but look back at the ravine that separates me from then and now.

You aren’t being anti-intellectual; you just need to drink some water. Accept that you don’t have all the answers. Don’t wallow, but relish, in not knowing, and look for those answers – really look for them. And be patient. Odds are, if you don’t know how to do something well now, you’ll know how to do it later. Because you’ll have more experience. Because time will pass. Because that’s... how that works.

Nowadays, at least in the written word, I feel an immense freedom to express my feelings on a film or really any piece of art without worrying that I don’t have the badge and velcro wallet of credentials. I may not know how to articulate thoughtfully or possess quick access to the best terms to use for a given situation. But I figure if I’m passionate enough that it will just come through. That, at least an expression of myself in this form, is accurate and representative of how I walk this life and enjoy the things in it.

So why can’t I enjoy or engage with music the same way?

It’s remained the only unchanging constant in my life for different reasons. I listen to so much of it, daily, and to the borderline concerning point where I won’t do certain things properly, like shower or brush my teeth or hang laundry or cook (or even read), unless I have it playing somewhere. I flash back to living with my parents, always having a radio playing at a low volume to fill any silence, especially with no one else was home.

I can’t go through a day without listening to music, the same way I can’t go through a day without having air to breathe. I listen to it every day, because a feeling I can’t describe like anything else gets to take over a part of myself. Yet I can never engage with music beyond how it makes me feel.

And maybe that’s the point. Maybe it’s enough to know that it can simply make me feel. But I can’t help but worry I’m missing out on even more fulfilling, definitive musical experiences that everyone takes for granted as the standard. This concern also stems mainly from the fact that, for the past five years, I’ve struggled a great deal with remembering lyrics to songs. Unless they’re written by a handful of artists I’m a diehard fan of, I have next to no hope of fully memorising a song. So many different vocals and patterns, line after line after line, repeated ad nauseum over the years, with seemingly nothing sticking to me. There are songs I love with all my heart, but will probably never be able to recall with more than a passable accuracy.

It’s hard not to pin this on what I guess is a weak memory, and at times, that really scares me. In the unashamed spirit of thinking too deeply, I can comfortably say that there are defining experiences in my life that have happened with music playing. But how soon before one or two missed passages become a whole verse that I can’t remember, or keep in time with?

Probably not soon. In fairness, I’m now writing spiralling out of a well-placed fear of losing my mind in general, as opposed to the subject at hand.

With time and a willingness to be kind to my mind, I think I can arrive at a similar place of understanding music and expressing my thoughts with it, as I have with film. It may very well be good enough that the shit just makes me happy when I listen to it. For now, I appreciate the prospect of a deeper meaning awaiting me beneath, instead of being paywalled via memory.

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