Tuesday 11 March 2014

Blurry (Puddle of Mudd)

If you enjoy this song, please be respectful of its creators by buying it on Google Play or iTunes.

This song is not all that amazing, objectively speaking, but it is intimately enmeshed in my history and has a special place in my heart. It’s one of the songs that reminds me of a person I was in love with for longer than anyone else; I met her when I started university and the magic persisted way into my 20s.

She was one of only two people I ever fell in love with ‘at first sight’, although technically speaking I didn’t really give her a second look in the first instance. But as with the other person I’m referring to, it was something that she said within probably 60 seconds of being in my proximity, that comprehensively blew my fucking mind. I physically felt the state of being in love wash over me “with the cold, sudden fury of a divine messenger”, to quote Jim Morrison, and from that moment I worshipped the divine aspect of her for years.

Although we hung out and talked on a number of occasions, she was never single at the same time as me, and even if she had been, I doubt that she would have been interested. To give you a glimpse of how far out of my league she was: she’d spend weekends climbing at Mt Arapiles and her mom was a professor who wrote the biology textbook I studied from.

Sadly -- and perhaps as a direct result of the psychotic intensity of my feelings for her -- I regularly behaved in the most inexpressibly moronic ways when I was around her. She was very patient and tolerant of this bugfuck insanity; even though I was never off my brain on drugs in her presence, I might as well have been tripping on a whole cocktail of hallucinogenics, considering some of the shit that came out of my mouth. I physically cringe to this day when I remember how inconceivably stupid I was, and I am agonised with regret that her concept of me is probably distant by a matter of light years from who I actually am today -- which is completely understandable in light of my actions.

Years later I briefly resumed contact with her, although I can’t exactly remember what sparked the communication. I had a chat with her online a few times, even helped her tighten up her CV for a prospective job in Canada; by that time my obsessive fixation had dissipated, and it was lovely to just be ‘normal’ friends without that extra factor complicating things from my end.

Tragically there was some residual neurotransmitter bullshit, and when talking to her at length I once again started coming out with such ridiculously bizarre shit that my mind actively boggles to explain it. It was very much like what Jim Morrison said about being “a sensitive, intelligent human being, but with the soul of a clown that forces me to blow it at the most crucial moment.” I don’t know, perhaps being fatally in love brings out my inner drugfucked poet.

It absolutely breaks my fucking heart, because despite all my stupidity, and regardless of my former fondness for this individual, I had the opportunity to leave a lasting, positive impression -- and I fucked it up.

Long ago, I made this person a mixtape (on CD), comprised mostly of the songs I’d written for her over the years, including the best composition I’ve ever managed to squeeze out. ‘Blurry’ was one of the tracks on it that wasn’t by me.

Even though the lyrics are not all that applicable -- considering her proficiency in Wing Chun, it would have been her  protecting my  ass, for example -- she and I were rarely in the same country at the same time, and the plaintive yet respectful tone of “I wonder what you’re doing, imagine where you are” really resonated with me. Also, this song was popular at a time when I was thinking about her a lot, so whenever I hear it, part of my consciousness is transported to an era in my youth when I was callow and irresponsible, but overall, happy and untroubled.

Which brings me to the present moment. Another song I recently dusted off made me think of this one with increasing frequency over the last two weeks or so. And this morning, right on the buzzer of 0400, I was wakened by ‘Blurry’ playing on my neighbour’s radio. It’s not a song that gets frequent airplay, so it took on the significance of what you might call a transmission from the infinite. I was thus inspired to charge out of bed like a rocket, as the old saying goes, and the whole preceding phylum of my life was precipitated into this Song of the Moment.

Check it out on YouTube

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