the harder they come

recently, i read the book ‘high fidelity’.

for those of you that have seen the movie - - - the film is about as close to the novel as a film can get. the majority of the script for the movie was taken directly (word for word) from the book. that in mind... i enjoyed the book much less than the movie (which has more to do with my love for john and joan cusak than anything else).

all my complaints and irritations aside, ‘high fidelity’ has one message that i can identify with.

“What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?”

i have talked about this before... i am not sure if the music or the emotion comes first. i can be feeling totally fine - - - but if i throw on an album by the weakerthans, knapsack, green day, onelinedrawing, elvis costello, cursive, coheed and cambria, mars volta, dashboard confessional, elliot smith, death cab for cutie, etc. etc. etc. i can end up in a totally different mood. for instance, i was just *thinking* about the song ‘pets’ by porno for pyros and i ended up feeling desperate, unwilling to make connections to the people around me. maybe i was already feeling that way... but simply humming the song made me feel like i would marry my cat and never answer the phone again.

for someone as optimistic and ‘sunny’ as i tend to be (morbid sense of humor aside) i wonder why it is that all i want to listen to is emo. do i want to be sad... or do i want the music to ‘let’ me be sad? i dunno.

don’t get me wrong, i have my destiny’s child, mr. justin timbah-lake, sly and the family stone, missy elliot, rupaul, shonen knife, waitresses, apples in stereo, etc. etc. etc. kinda moments. but if i had to answer a desert-island type question - - - my choice would likely be an album that makes me cry. cry and dance.

w00t!

as for the book ‘high fidelity’ - - - i would generously give it a 6 out of 10. the main character *is* the story - and i find him to be unlikeable and frustrating. if you are looking for a mind-candy type of book - it is a quick read. don’t buy it, borrow it. that is my advice to you. chris and sarah can back me up on this - or refute it.