i’m a basket-case. i don’t know what basket-case means. everyone calls everyone emotional bi-polar. everyone who can’t be understood is called crazy. throwing words around like they don’t matter. they don’t, really.
we all use the same ones, and the only reason some people have lives, or careers, is because they say the things other people won’t. if a million people feel the way taylor swift does, she sings it and they sing along because they feel it. they feel the words and the emotion, because they felt it when they first heard it.
the singer is the voice for everyone at every different moment. loneliness, craziness, it all happens and we turn on a song that relates to that feeling and we feel it with that person - reminding ourselves that we’re not the only ones. it helps us figure our little things out along the way and keep on going. that one song is the difference between getting up in the morning or staying alone in your bed.
we lose touch sometimes and without music to guide us we’re convinced that we’re the only ones on the planet - even if we walk down the street passing by a million people who might be mood-swinging on the same end as us. we never really know, though.
if it’s clever and appropriate - a musician can sway civilizations with words. who else has the power to sway 10,000, 20,000, even 80,000 people at the same time, and bring them to the same emotional level? in the palm of their hand, the musician holds souls, and hopefully provides hope.
the words don’t have to be positive, they just have to be honest. the thing is, every musician can be a musician if he dares to be - and the reason any working musician is a working musician is because he or she dared to be. because for every mass there is infinite emotions to be tapped. if you can tap them, you’re in.
that’s why attempts to solve the puzzle don’t work - why would the artists who strictly make marketable dance songs last? their work serves a minute purpose for a minute moment - the night-time, often masked by drunkenness. if your only work caters to drunkenness, you’re deceiving yourself and your listeners.
the songs that work, and last, are the kind that hit the sober man in his gut and just stay there and bounce around, with no feasible solution but to keep listening and keep listening because of this scratch that must be infinitely itched.
be honest, be open, find yourself, and find the words that you mean. we all use the same words anyway - have a conversation on the street and the reason the person you’re speaking with understands you is because they’ve heard all your words before.
think about this when you try to express yourself. everyone will understand you, but will they feel the things you’re saying to them? you might be crazy, but so is everyone else, they just hide it well.
don’t hide from yourself - you’ll always be found out in the corner of your own bedroom, when the music shuts off and the electricity dies out and you’re left alone with your own mind - there is no running from the thoughts you know you’re bound to have. you can only drown them out for so long.
