Category: Tragic Songs

Song Reflections: Princess Mononoke Theme Song (English Version)

Complaining can be immature and ugly, which I don’t disagree.  But we Japanese always consider it a virtue, to never complain and hold our sufferings inside.  And that suffering will remain with you, it festers and grows, until it turns something very attached, and uglier.

This song is about that loneliness of being the person carrying a dark secret.  The person who smiles on the outside when inside s/he is crying.

Locked away in the forest of the night
Your secret heart belongs to the world
Of the things that sigh in the dark
Of the things that cry in the dark

Cathartic Songs / Life's Truths Drawn from Songs / Music Commentary / Tragic Songs   /

Song Reflections: Alice in Chains “Hollow”

You know nobody’s looking, nobody will know.

Can you fight off the temptations and take the high road?

For example, bullies are not happy people.  They are taking it out on somebody who seems weaker.  Somebody who doesn’t, won’t fight back.

But when you sit in a quiet place — how do you feel about it?  Don’t you feel… hollow?

We have all done something we’re not proud of.  Stuff that you’d rather keep hidden.

But they will sit there, creating hollowness, until you dig them out.

 

Life's Truths Drawn from Songs / Music Commentary / Provocative Songs / Tragic Songs   /

Song Reflections: King’s X “A Box”

Who wouldn’t relate to the idea of “Revolution number 19/ Brand new wave of anger?”

I’ve been there — feeling really stuck, really confined in a box smaller than me, wanting to break out, wanting to break free.

For those of us living in developed societies, we’d like to think that we’re making life better, with each generation making things better.  But we still have a lot to learn about what it’s like to live as whole human beings.  So many institutions, from jobs to schools, give us small boxes for us to fit neatly into.  Being told to do same things everyday — just playing our little parts.  We have so much more to offer, yet that’s not that they want.  They want us to reduce ourselves to something smaller, so it’s easy to fit us into little corners.

It’s not that we have to be asked, either.  We don’t know how to be anything else.  The desire is there, but not how.  So we bang our head against the walls in frustration, knowing that we are bigger, and wanting to be, but without knowing what that really means.

Then we just do what we can — just learn to live with it, live in the box with our longing, knowing that there is no room inside a box.

Cathartic Songs / Life's Truths Drawn from Songs / Music Commentary / Tragic Songs