I was recently reminded of The Cure's breakthrough 1989 CD "Disintegration" and have been listening to it quite a bit lately.
When I lived in Austin some 20 years ago, there were a couple of times that I lived alone during my student years. One of them was quasi-alone as I lived in an attic apartment above the house that my sister and her friend rented. However, for all intents and purposes, I was living alone.
It was a heady time, thinking that I had become a man. Silly Rabbit, Tricks are for kids, and that was one trick that I had been playing upon myself. I was no Man, merely a large kid. In the interim, I believe that I have in fact become a "man" and have learned to live life on life's terms, but that comes at a great price, namely a sacrifice of one's Ego upon the chopping block of Humility. Anything short of that won't do, it is nothing more than a mockery, a travesty of life's greatest gifts of love, forgiveness, and trust.
I used to listen to Disintegration in my attic abode, and like the Dude, I tried to abide, and for the most part I did. It was the year that I read more books than I have since, and perhaps will. It was a year of living dangerously, and of just living. I think that that year shaped much of the things to come about who I was to be, for better and for worse. Good habits as well as bad grew from that year, and while I have shed the bad, I have re-embraced the good ones. Though, as I believe, the relative perspective of what is good and bad on a small scale, and even on a big one, is like the ebb and flow of the tidal pools that are so rich in diversity amidst the maelstroms of the storms around them.
I once had a great sound system, one that could blow my then longish hair back like the Maxell Tape Dude from the commercial (for you young 'uns, that was big, and was pre-Family Guy), and I would sit in my couch and turn up Disintegration til the knob reached "11" and be taken away somewhere else. Thinking back, it was the "opening song", "Closedown" that was perhaps the first time that I achieved something like "meditation" by sound. I remember listening to that song, over and over, on repeat, maybe up to twenty times before listening to the rest of the CD. It moved me.
That CD is one of the most influential compilations of music in my life to date, and it has not lost its power over me one bit as I now listen to it again, this time, alone, but in a new apartment after having been in my "own house" for nearly two decades. This time, however, I am in fact a "man," and have lived many lifetimes in the meanwhile.
Music transports us to other Places, other Times. Lyrics can bring us to tears, or to bliss. To dis-integrate one's life is to break it down into the pieces, like a smashed vase, and not to try and re-build the vase, but to sit on the floor and to look at each piece carefully, full of care, and to appreciate how beautifully complex our lives are, how vastly unique, yet somehow intertwined in the chaotic scrambling.
When I listen to Disintegration, I realize that my life has dis-integrated on some levels, yet, on others, has been re-integrated. Where there is a sundering, there is a reconciliation, so it goes...
And, of course, the Maxell Tape Commercial....
When I lived in Austin some 20 years ago, there were a couple of times that I lived alone during my student years. One of them was quasi-alone as I lived in an attic apartment above the house that my sister and her friend rented. However, for all intents and purposes, I was living alone.
It was a heady time, thinking that I had become a man. Silly Rabbit, Tricks are for kids, and that was one trick that I had been playing upon myself. I was no Man, merely a large kid. In the interim, I believe that I have in fact become a "man" and have learned to live life on life's terms, but that comes at a great price, namely a sacrifice of one's Ego upon the chopping block of Humility. Anything short of that won't do, it is nothing more than a mockery, a travesty of life's greatest gifts of love, forgiveness, and trust.
I used to listen to Disintegration in my attic abode, and like the Dude, I tried to abide, and for the most part I did. It was the year that I read more books than I have since, and perhaps will. It was a year of living dangerously, and of just living. I think that that year shaped much of the things to come about who I was to be, for better and for worse. Good habits as well as bad grew from that year, and while I have shed the bad, I have re-embraced the good ones. Though, as I believe, the relative perspective of what is good and bad on a small scale, and even on a big one, is like the ebb and flow of the tidal pools that are so rich in diversity amidst the maelstroms of the storms around them.
I once had a great sound system, one that could blow my then longish hair back like the Maxell Tape Dude from the commercial (for you young 'uns, that was big, and was pre-Family Guy), and I would sit in my couch and turn up Disintegration til the knob reached "11" and be taken away somewhere else. Thinking back, it was the "opening song", "Closedown" that was perhaps the first time that I achieved something like "meditation" by sound. I remember listening to that song, over and over, on repeat, maybe up to twenty times before listening to the rest of the CD. It moved me.
That CD is one of the most influential compilations of music in my life to date, and it has not lost its power over me one bit as I now listen to it again, this time, alone, but in a new apartment after having been in my "own house" for nearly two decades. This time, however, I am in fact a "man," and have lived many lifetimes in the meanwhile.
Music transports us to other Places, other Times. Lyrics can bring us to tears, or to bliss. To dis-integrate one's life is to break it down into the pieces, like a smashed vase, and not to try and re-build the vase, but to sit on the floor and to look at each piece carefully, full of care, and to appreciate how beautifully complex our lives are, how vastly unique, yet somehow intertwined in the chaotic scrambling.
When I listen to Disintegration, I realize that my life has dis-integrated on some levels, yet, on others, has been re-integrated. Where there is a sundering, there is a reconciliation, so it goes...
And, of course, the Maxell Tape Commercial....
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