love_more raze i haven't been able to listen to this song in a long time. i felt too close to it. my brain doesn't tend to work that way when it comes to music. these days i don't ever put anything on repeat, but i only ever go out of my way to avoid something when i don't care for it, or when i care for it so much i want to preserve as much of the sweaty-palmed mystery the music first held for me as i can. my friend liam owns the last remaining independent record store in this city. it's the only place i go to buy music anymore. a little less than two years ago, i was vinyl-hunting when whatever he was playing on the sound system caught my ear. "what is this?" i asked. he held up a copy of "epic" by sharon van etten. "it's hot right now," he told me. i bought the album and brought it home. as i tend to do, i forgot about it for a little while. there was snow on the ground, though winter was supposedly on its way out. i had just reconnected with a friend i'd lost touch with seven years earlier. over those seven years i wondered how she was, but i had no way to get in touch with her and didn't expect we would ever see one another again. something conspired to bring us back together. i found myself at her house one night. she said she'd always wanted to be with me. now that there was nothing standing in our way and we were both a little older and wiser, what did i think? i wasn't sure. i was enjoying being single. and here was an opportunity i never thought i would have, when i wasn't expecting or looking for it at all. i didn't feel i had much to give anyone at the time, and i was reluctant to put myself out there. at the same time, if i didn't give it a shot, somewhere in the back of my mind i would always wonder what might have happened. it was such a clear-cut case of getting another chance with "the one that got away", the whole thing was practically a cliché come to life. with all of this swimming around inside my head and the double-edged knife of indecision jabbing at my sides, i crawled into bed in the dark, put on headphones, and listened to "epic" for the first time. i liked it. then i got to "love more", and something else happened. it smacked me in the face with its open-ended beauty. i hadn't heard a song that hit me like that in a long time. you know how sometimes you hear a piece of music and you get this strange feeling like you're changing in some barely tangible way while listening to it? like you're not quite the same person anymore once it's over. it's not that the words seem to be ripped out of your own life. there's something in there that resonates with you on a deeper level, in a place beyond words, and it's at once beautiful and painful. that's what this song did for me. it was exactly what i needed to hear right then. in the course of listening to it, i decided i needed to take the chance and see where this potential romantic adventure would lead me, fear and insecurity be damned. i would let my guard down. i would take the chance. here's what happened: the whole thing was a gigantic fucking mess. there's no other way to put it. she lied, and cheated, and somehow found a way to make me the bad guy. but in spite of how spectacularly wrong we turned out to be for each other and how ugly the fallout was when it all fell apart, i'm glad i had the experience. it might have been a mistake, but it was a mistake i needed to make. i learned a lot from it. one of the things that fascinates me about art of any kind is the ability it gives you to attach your own meaning to it, and how you're then allowed to discover the meaning has shifted when you return to it after a long absence, as if the art has changed — when really, it's you who's changed. when i heard the song again after the mess was over, it meant something completely different to me and took on a more defeated, bittersweet feeling. now i'm listening to it again for the first time in more than a year. and i don't know what it makes me feel. something i haven't felt before. something i can't put into words yet. this song has become a strange kind of emotional barometer for me. a place to return to so i can get a feel for where i am, and where i might be going. i'm just glad i had the chance to discover it the way i did, hearing it for the first time alone in the dark, instead of in a montage on "grey's anatomy". 130101 ... raze it's time to return to it again. 150513 ... raze i had a dream i was telling someone about this song, and as it started to play on the soundtrack in the strange, seamless way music will work its way into the dream_world, i responded with a sort of interpretive dance from a resting position on a mattress on the floor. the song was all wrong, though. the vocal melodies were different, the harmonies were gone, and it felt like the whole thing had been gutted. it was like a mediocre cover version by someone who sounded like sharon van etten but didn't really know her music. the dream was just playing with me. later i was able to track down the real thing (or at least my dream's best approximation of it), and all i could do was stand there and weep while it washed over me. 201029 ... raze i listened to this a few months ago for the first time in half a decade and it wrecked me all over again. it's a funny relationship to have with a song. when i'm listening to it, i never want it to end, and then when it's gone i know it's going to be a while before i can go through it again. it's those cascading vocal harmonies at the end that kill me, falling and rising back up just to fall again, and again, and again. i love a lot of music for a lot of different reasons, but if i'm given the choice of just one small pocket of sound to relive on a loop for all of eternity after i die, i think that might be it for me. 210808 ... unhinged all beings want happiness, love all beings want an end to suffering for years i've been kvetching around here about my search for love. but this pandemic time has been a charnel_ground, crucible for putting my religion to the test. there's a reason why it's been around for thousands of years. shambhala_training planted seeds that the pandemic sprouted into flowers the story that i tell myself about you, us can range so far from reality that it is its own being. the reality is that every time i reveal my feelings to you, you are kind and reciprocal. the reality is you have a lot more personal obligations than i do. the reality is you may be the only man on this planet that i feel safe enough with to give my body to. i do not hold my love hostage with expectations anymore love isn't something to be found just give it away 210808 what's it to you? 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