Jeff Filice invited me to the Radiohead concert on Sunday, bless him bless him. For a long time I've been very intimidated by this band. As to why, I'll have to start from ground up. Lyrics as cryptic as theirs demand scrutinization. Whenever I would try to decode their songs I would way, way overshoot, trip myself up and drown in confusion. This shortcoming was hard for me to cope with, I felt like I had failed in a way, like I was stupid for not being able to pick them apart. I decided to drop the whole thing, bury it away and come up with convenient excuses about them being "so pretentious" which I myself believed half-heartedly.
With Jeff's invitation I decided to heal the wound. I've been throwing around a few new ideas I've had and they held particular bearing on this situation. They are as follows: every person alive is capable of experiencing the full spectrum of human experience and therefore is not obligated to hold themselves to one particular standard, i.e. a personality. Personality is limiting and counter-intuitive if you wish to live as full a life as possible. One can become whatever they wish at any given moment without notice or justification. I'm just starting to get a hang on actually implementing this theory.
So, I implemented the theory. This sounds rather bizarre, but if you do stuff like this always with a sense of humor, all is forgiven. Listening to Kid A, standing in front of a mirror wearing a featureless white mask, I concentrated on the issue until I started to pinpoint exactly what made me so agitated. Using the mask simply as a visual metaphor for building from as blank a slate as possible, I slowly knocked down every barrier that was holding me back. When I was done, I had finished most of the album and it was like the Berlin Wall being destroyed, I was able to tread in the realm of Yorke without the least bit of fear, lyrics included. Ironically, once I allowed myself to see, their message made perfect sense to me. It fits me well. I can now live comfortably with whatever reactions their music may elicit from me, and I no longer feel the need to attack them to justify my own insecurities.
So just goes to show, what one cannot find without, one can find within.
The world's most important man enjoys some icthe cweem.
