This always breaks my heart when I hear you tell it, Nathan. Cooling is the most amazing song and it makes perfect sense the way all of this came together.
Those talks you and your Dad shared were as important to him as they were to you, I'm sure. He was such a kind and gentle man and so non~judgemental. He made people feel very special. I know that you feel you are more like your Mom and I agree but I see a lot of your Dad in you also. Healing is a tricky business and can be very hard work, The problem is we often don't know what to work on to get through. Music is the connector ~ brings the epiphany ~ for many of us. You have a lot of strength and while these events have altered your life forever, you will find the peace you are seeking. Love you bunches ~ give Curtis a hug!

Wow Tron, that was heavy reading. I had goosebumps all the while I read
and I can completely relate to the things you write about the music and
the lyrics.

I just wrote a very, very lengthy response to your post but I kind of
got lost in my own words and decided it would be best to delete it and
try again another day.

But I appreciate how you put your feelings into writing and shared it
with us. That's very courageous.

All I'll say now is that I understand. The rest will come at a later day.

really, really flying on "Both Sides Now" lately (the version from the album of the same name). gorgeous.

I had to get used to her mellowed out voice, but once I did...

Lovely album. I love the way her voice ages...

HamsterHuey said:

I just listened to it all the way through.

It fills a similar role as k.d. lang's last one. Beautiful. :sniff:

Hey Gooey, this is off-topic, but did you receive the orgnote I sent you a bit ago? My fucking orgnotes don't work!

minneapolisgenius said:

Send yourself a note. It brought all mine back.

Okay, you guys have kindly urged me, so I'm gonna share my Tori story. It's a bit long and meandering, but just bare with me.

It was the holiday season, end of 2003. My brother was in South Africa for a month and I was at my parents for 3 weeks from about the middle of December until the first week of January. For the most part, the time with my family was pleasant and uneventful in a good way. Most of you that know me know that I'm a bit of a night owl. But at the time, I was going to bed around 1 or 2 in the morning - quite early for me. The problem was, I would wake up a few hours later wide awake and unable to get back to sleep. This started happening every night. And after awhile, it started to get to me. I started doing a lot of soul searching and at times felt like I was losing my mind. And I had no idea why. It got worse and worse with each day to the point that I could almost anticipate when I'd wake up and the nightmares I'd have. A mental block? Maybe. But if felt like something more.

In the middle of the night when I'd wake up, I would quietly sit in my room and find things to do to settle myself down. I had gotten hardcore into Tori again after a 4 year dry spell with her. I really hadn't listened to her at all in that time. I was filling in the gaps with the material I'd missed and was especially focused on the b-sides. So many times, I would just sit there listening to her on my computer while playing computer solitaire. A mind numbing exercise. But it didn't work that way. I found myself drawn to her song "Cooling". I had been doing a lot of reading of her lyrics and quotes and whatnot, so I became really in tune with 'Tori-speak' during that period. I could pretty much decode whatever it was she was talking/singing about. At least I felt that I could. Several nights in a row, I would just play this song over and over and over again until it became sort of a mantra for me. I won't go into the whole song's meaning, but when I first locked into this part, something happened to me.

And peggy got a message for me
From jesus
And I’ve heard every word that you have said
And I know I have been driven like the snow

This is cooling
Faster than I can

Something about those words, and the way she sang them, in that melody with those piano parts behind them absolutely shredded me into a million pieces. When I really *heard* the song for the first time, I couldn't stop crying. Like the kind of crying where you can't even see anything, you're crying so hard. I don't know if any of you have ever had this happen before, but I felt so in unison with this artist at this time that I actually felt like I was turning into this song. And a few others by her too. I know, abstract right? But that's the best way I can describe it. I was so overly tired and emotional and burned out that I didn't even feel like a human or an animal or a soul anymore. I felt like I WAS this music. And in its own way, it was getting by.

So after these late night sessions, I would go out into the livingroom. A little background. My mother always slept on the couch in the livingroom. My father always slept in the bedroom. She's a night person like me. He's always been a morning person. So I would kinda cross paths with him around 5/6 in the morning. My mom would be on so many psychiatric drugs that we could watch TV and talk without her hearing any of it. Now my dad was a far more emotionally guarded and stable individual than any of the other crazies in my family. But we would just sit there at the kitchen table playing cards, having really deep conversations and just getting to know eachother better than ever, sometimes up to 2 or 3 hours. It felt really cool and special, but I had no idea the importance of it at that time. But now I'm convinced that the time we shared during those late night/early morning hours for those 3 weeks of Christmas break were given to me directly from God. Here's why.

After the holidays I went back to my house about an hour away in Detroit and resumed life as usual. Things quickly returned to normal for me. Or so I thought. I got a call about a month later from my mom saying he had fallen over in bed and was non-responsive. Without getting into all the awful details that followed - he had a stroke and struggled with it for 3 weeks before passing away at the beginning of March. I think I saw him maybe once for a brief visit at my house between the holiday vacation and him dying. So really, my last true and meaningful memories of him being alive and well were those late night talks. And it's all woven together in my mind with that song. It haunts me to this day and might be the single most important piece of music to me. The death of my father and the subsequent deaths of both of my grandmothers, all in less than a year is by far the most painful and grueling thing I've ever gone through. And I really don't feel like I'm over any of it yet.

Now I see that time of struggle at my parents' as a gift, a preparation of what was to come. The first lines of the song say it all for me.

Maybe I didn’t like to hear
But I still can’t believe speed racer is dead
So then I thought I’d make some plans
But fire thought she’d really rather be water instead

You could basically substitute my father's name in for speed racer. That's how I feel. And if you've followed Tori closely and know the background of this song, you know that she considered it for both "Boys for Pele" and "From the Choirgirl Hotel", but she decided it didn't work with either. Pele being her fire album, full of rage and hurt and revenge; and Choirgirl being her water album, full of sorrow, loss and acceptance. The line about fire wanting to be water, that IS me. All the confusion I went through in that time I'm trying to see through and find some peace. The healing process is a tricky thing and I'm learning it all over again. Several times in fact. So when I listen to that song, I'm haunted by what's happened, but also soothed by the message of change and piecing yourself back together.

So Isten, yes I know EXACTLY what you're talking about. It happened to me with "Both Sides Now" by Joni just last night. With "Cooling" I didn't really know the significance it would have for me later and I didn't know what feelings I was supposed to address, but now it's perfectly clear to me. As cheesy as it sounds on paper or casually spoken, I do feel like music has the power to get you through and even save your life. It has for me many times.

At times like that, music is life. I had a somewhat similar experience with "Ceremony" on the plane ride home.