2011-11-11

11/11/11

Since it's the magical date of 11/11/11 I feel that producing a blogpost is somewhat appropriate. Don't ask why - I just have a feeling that this is something I should do.
Due to the number of 1's in the date I'm going to talk about something important for me: a Finnish metal band called - wait for it, waaaait for it - Nightwish, what an immense surprise!
In the list of my favourite musicians Nightwish unquestionably dominates the top. There's no one capable of taking over that place for that's simply how things work in Anniworld.
Yeah, guys you totally have every reason to hang out on a bridge and laugh and wear cool hats cos you're hands down the best band in the whole friggin universe.
Even though I have declared myself a very irrational and more or less crazy individual whose opinions are what they are just because, I'll try to specify at least a bit of what makes Nightwish so special in comparison with other musicians and music groups. This I will do by using these guys' brand new single, Storytime as an example of my relationship to their music -or something along those lines anyway.

Okay.
As we all know the writer of this blog is quite a nutcase with her emotional outbursts and melodramatic apprehensions of the happenings of her life. Stressing, over-analysing and troubled she is and the perspective of her so-called problems is most of the time distorted to make everything seem just slightly too massive and unsolvable. She doesn't like to see herself as a drama queen but in all honesty that's what she is -at least a tiny bit.

My life philosophy.
In addition to the babblery (is that even a word?) above I'm very much an escapist, too. I seek comfort from fantasy, fairy tales and dreams. I consume Disney classics, original Grimm tales, surrealism and sci-fi series like oxygen. I obviously love those things and enjoy them, but what they really give to me is peace and the feeling of safety. In a way they're like cosy blankets I wrap around myself to avoid the coldness from outside world.

Music in general is really important to me for it helps me to handle and understand complicated stuff I'm forced to face in this mess of a world of humans. It also makes it easier to get why other people might function differently than I'd expect, and through music even the most socially awkward souls can express their feelings.

It's not very simple to grasp or pinpoint what exactly in Nightwish's music touches me so deeply. Some of the stories seem to be completely out of this world in their fantastical and amazing scenarios - and yet they talk about things that are down-to-earth, familiar and humane. Perhaps it's the beauty and the complexity of the lyrics that encourages me to not analyse them but to merely embrace the feelings aroused by the songs. I know all of the songs by heart and still I can't claim to fully understand their meaning - not explicitly anyway. As I said, it's rather hard to name the thing that makes Nightwish unlike any other and their music so breathtaking and moving. For me it's something that I feel in my heart and my very being; something that I can't put into words.

When I first heard Storytime I'd just woken up and my head was all bleary and woozy. The quality of the YouTube clip I'd found was quite shitty to be honest and I knew I should be hurrying to the uni shortly. Like the vast majority of Nighwish's songs so far, Storytime too left me dazed and teary. After hastily converting the illegal copy in mp3 and downloading it into my iPhone I had to make a run to the bus station.
Having relaxed myself in a sitting position I finally had time to really focus on the song and familiarise myself with it, which I did by listening in repeat the whole journey. At some point during that bus journey something in the song truly hit me. I don't know what it was and why and when, but all of a sudden there was this awesome sensation of I-don't-even-know-what. I wasn't particularly anxious or depressed or anything like that to start with but nevertheless I had this light at the end of the tunnel experience. For my dear, gianormously beloved Iridium I tried to explain this sensation as a combination of a soft blanket wrapped around you in a cold winter day, the smell after a heavy rain, seeing an astonishingly bright yellow sunflower in the middle of an otherwise monotonous field and the feeling of someone encouragingly and solidly squeezing your hand when you're feeling distressed.
I don't know if this makes any sense to anyone else than myself but those were first things to pop in my mind when I pondered how to explain such an abstract thing in literal form.

It's so very rare for anything to release my grip on whatever issues I'm struggling with in the real life that I feel completely overwhelmed every time it actually happens. For instance, when feeling blue, numerous songs can make me feel at least slightly better. However I still can't truly believe that things will be fine some day and that I won't have to listen to music to be able to deal with the problem in question for there will be no problem. Are you even following anymore? I'm not sure I'm following. Then there are some songs, like Storytime, which do more.
I felt almost like it was a personal message for me, like those incredible, internationally celebrated musicians were playing just to tell me that everything is okay and that I will get through whatever is draining and bugging me. And so I believed it and felt absurdly happy and hopeful for a while.

No matter how tough and paralysingly hopeless things seemed, at least there are these amazing people who make this heavenly music, which even in its incapability of healing the world has so much goodness in it that it makes it worth to carry on despite everything.

 

Imaginarium, a dream emporium!
Caress the tales
And they will read you real
A storyteller's game,
Inside he flicks the gate
The calling heart
Is a limitless chest of tales... 

I failed a bit, by the way, for it's already the 12th and not 11th anymore.
But it's still yesterday in someplace so what the hell.

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