Iam trying to recall the songs I used to sing, all the while trying to learn by heart the songs that I think define me as I am today.
Even as I know that merely reciting ( I can't absolutely claim what I do as singing) or even listening to the songs does not necessarily reanimate moments,identities, and alas, forgotten or changed truths, I keep on trying to find consolation from the fact that the songs can still be sung, can be heard, I only have to will hearing and singing them.
Which is not the case for other things.
I find that wanting to talk to some person isn't always like actually talking to the same person. You realize; she's now speaking in some language you do not understand, he's now intelligible, talking about changed principles, renewed perspectives.
I find that meanings are not permanent, or at least not for everyone.
Though I absolutely want to vaingloriously announce that I am one of those who always deem the old respectable, I realize I can't. and It is, I know selfish, but I cannot help but feel disappointed when meanings change for other people as well.
I find that my memory, is it memory, is susceptible to the constant invitation to disremember the day and the sun during the night.
Because these are the songs I believed the soundtracks of who I am (or was), my little triumphs, my day dreams, my awkward heartaches, my imagined heartbreaks, my late-night conversations with myself.
And yet when I try to listen to some of them, I cannot find the same joy, or at least recall what they might have meant for me at a certain time, the way I cannot recall how my first glass of coke might have tasted for me, how my first time to write my name legibly must have felt. Moreover, I realize, that specific sense and significance cannot be replicated in the same way that history cannot be repeated. I have yet to know if it is because it may be in another time or moment, or if it's true that people never remain exactly who they are, and that they, we, change a moment or a few more after we claim to be who we want to be at a certain time.
I cannot, however, argue that it is vain to sing these songs, since they are to be meaningless in another time. It cannot be said that our impulse to find things for expression is futile, that to relate to some other person's song or writing is inane...because while realizing that some things do not mean the same after some time anymore I am aware that sharing some song with the artist (enough to download it from the internet, or better yet, legally buy records or even go to concerts) is an indication that we are alike in some way or more, similarly human (I hope not otherwise). When you find yourself agreeing to the writer, it is not only a suggestion of seeing sense, but also of finally finding your own thought in someone else's text, of seeing what you have always felt but failed to express let out, at last. I also know that we are always in search of fortifications for our beliefs, supports for our resolutions, an affirmative answer to our question of being. and sometimes they are enough, a certain song, or a letter, you sang or read a certain time, to prove that you were, at that time happy, in love, miserable, triumphant, sincere or remorseful; or simply that you were actually there in the first place.
Like how i can claim that once, I sang a certain Dashboard Confessional song to myself, because I believed in another person completely (but was too vain to admit it, and too afraid of the reaction to that belief). I am not sure if I sing it now with as much passion or if that belief is still as firm. Now I am aware that I have gotten past that vanity and fear, but I know at a particular time, that song meant precisely that for me.
Knowing these, I do not lose the fervor to find the melodies and the words to define every moment and ideal, to claim a poem, or a movie (or a koreanovela:)), or a song, mine as much as it's of the writer's, composer's or director's.
And so I re-sing the songs I used to sing, and I mouth the new lyrics that now chase my every emotion and dream, and while fully knowing that tomorrow these songs may not mean anything at all to me, though still surreptitiously wishing they would, I sing with the same spirit, an olden spirit - that of dreaming.
Completely believing, completely willing.
The melodies may be evanescent, I'm hoping not, but if they are, then that's a better reason to relish the meanings while they last.
"but i believe in you so much i could die for the words that you say
but i believe in you so much i could die from the words that you say"
chasing the ghost of a good thing.dashboard confessional
