Et si cette chanson n'existerait pas?

It's funny how now that I have a break (well had actually since it's almost over) from school, I have even less time to post here. So many things that I wanted to discuss and I never got to them...oh well.

This song doesn't need any description. It speaks for itself. It's any romantic's dream. And it's simply beautiful.

"Et si tu n'existais pas, j'essayerais d'inventer l'amour. Comme un peintre qui voit sous ses doigts naître les couleurs du jour et qui n'en revient pas."

Sigh No More

BENEDICK:
Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hail souls out of men's bodies?

Hahaha!!!



DON PEDRO:
By my troth, a good song.

BALTHASAR:
And an ill singer, my lord.

DON PEDRO:
No, no, faith; thou singest well enough.

BENEDICK:
Had he had been a dog that should have howled thus,
they would have hanged him...

Hahahahaha!!!

Ok you might be wondering what this is all about? Well overall, this is what happens when rich people have too much time on their hands. Long story short, Beatrice (Emma Thompson) and Benedick (Kenneth Branagh) (BeneDICK?? what happened to BeneDICT?) hate each other and Don Pedro (Denzel Washington) has decided that, with the help of Hero (Kate Beckinsale) who is Beatrice's cousin, her father Leonato (Richard Briars) and her fiancee Claudio (Robert Sean Leonard), he will make the two fall in love. This is the scene where everything is set into motion and I really laughed my ass off listening to it!

“For I will be horribly in love with her.[...] The world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.”

The world must be peopled?? Hahahahaha!!!

Urme

Probably the stupidest post ever, but hahahahaha!!! Ok deci nu-mi vine sa cred ca faza asta ma amuza in halul asta dar era just epic!! Deja partea ca i-am lasat a hickey a fost geniala, dar apoi a fost prea scump cum incerca sa scape de el hahaha! De parca era o urma de ruj....Ah copilul asta e prea adorabil.

Falling out of existentialism

There’s something wrong with me. Something is not entirely right if I’m starting to miss people depending on my hormonal imbalance. I’m way too dependent on my moods. That’s no way to lead your life. Kierkegaard said there were 3 stages in life: the aesthetic phase where you just go depending on your mood and everything’s ephemeral, the ethical phase where you live by moral rules and only for duty, and finally the religious phase where you just let yourself “fall in God’s loving arms” or some bull like that. Obviously I’m at the first stage. And it’s not a fun place to be because since everything is dictated by momentary feelings and moods, it’s very difficult to make a decision and then stick to it. Everything changes according to the present moment and while I may be sure of something right now, tomorrow might all of a sudden make me realize that my divine illumination was just pure foolishness. So how do you find truth in that case? How do you figure out what you want, when that which you want today, you might perceive as being worthless tomorrow?

This might be the time to move on to the second stage you might think. But what if I don’t want to live a life of duty? What if I don’t want to live my life according to a set of fixed and rigid rules that begin with the starting premise that they can never be broken? I mean, lying can be good sometimes, right? And who wants to make their everyday life into a boring and endless routine? That might work for Kant, but I think I’d end up shooting myself after a while.

And I don’t even want to think about the third stage. I mean the idea of God and everything religion preaches is all good and noble, but I simply cannot believe in the existence of an invisible man up in the sky. There was this part in Angels and Demons by Dan Brown (yes his books are crap for the most part, but I liked the way he put this into words) where the main character was asked if he believed in God and in a nutshell his answer was that he didn’t have the strength needed to believe in Him. I find that’s a nice way to put it. Because by believing in God, so many things are all of a sudden simplified. If not, just the simple fact of not having to find a reason for your existence on this planet is worth the time and energy spent on that belief. Sometimes I wish so much that I could believe, that I could stop feeling like the world around us is nothing more than just atoms and probabilities. A friend of mine once asked me how I could go about my everyday life without believing in God and without a general purpose. And the question is legitimate. How can you go on knowing that you are alone, that nothing you do ever matters in the end and that, when it comes down to it, you are the only person you can count on? The answer? You don’t think about it. I see life like a particularly rough exam period where you can’t take everything in as a whole without it becoming too overwhelming. So you take it one week at a time, one day at a time if necessary, and you just don’t think about the rest. Because if you do, you become suicidal. Literally.

So that leaves me stuck at the first phase with no way out. Sometimes I think that maybe I don’t have the necessary maturity to move on or at least to function properly within this stage. But what if, on the other hand, there was a time to make a choice and I missed my chance to do it? Keating in The Dead Poets’ Society says that in this life we all have to strive to find our voice and that the longer we wait to do it, the harder it becomes and the less likely it is that we ever end up finding it. I already see myself slowly slipping out of the existential crisis and, while in a way this is a good thing for it gives me the chance to enjoy myself a bit more, on the other hand, I find it scary because I no longer question things as much as I used to, I am no longer as open-minded as I used to be, and I feel like I’m slowly turning into my parents, or in other words, like I’m becoming a conventional, blasé and cynical adult who has stopped wondering at the world and whose eyes are slowly but surely closing. I’m becoming trapped by the present day and the mundane. I’m forgetting how to step out of my reality and look beyond.

Maybe I need to cut my hair. Maybe I need to look deep down and try to find the teenager I used to be and uncover my inner rebel who’s slowly falling asleep. The truth is I don’t want to grow up and become an adult. I don’t want to be settled with kids and a dog in a suburban house, with a 9 to 5 job and a daily routine of “metro, boulot, dodo”. Life’s more than that (or in any case I’m still hoping). But then again, unless you make philosophy your job, you don’t have the time to spend your days wondering at the world (the proof? Right now I should be studying for my Organizational Behaviour exam and I somehow feel like I’ll really regret the time I spent on this in two days). Maybe I should just drop out of business school and become a librarian. I mean, if there is one thing in life that I love and have always loved, the only constant for the past 6 years, it’s books. And a library sometimes feels more like home than anything else. But then again, I’m too ambitious to settle for just some crummy old job. How much does a librarian make per year anyway?

Quote of the month

Once again, I'm adapting the schedule to fit occasions. So it's been 41 minutes that we entered the holiday (well I'm not so sure if it's actually a holiday...if it was, I probably wouldn't have had an exam on that day) that we call Valentine's Day. Now I'm really happy that I'm not in high school anymore and that I don't have to endure the disgusting amount of pink that people put just about everywhere in preparation for this day. I think this is what prompted me to make it my personal tradition to wear black at this particular time of the year. You know, so that whenever I felt like I was going to puke or faint from too much pink, then I'd just have to look at my shirt and I'd feel better. Nah ok, I'm exaggerating, but it went somewhere along those lines. In any case, this quote is a cynical (surprise, surprise) view of this holiday which always makes me smile when I see it.

"On Valentine's Day, millions of men give millions of women flowers, cards and candy as a heartfelt expression of the emotion that also motivates men to observe anniversaries and birthdays: fear."

Obsession

Ok here it is, my newest obsession. Lately I seem to be stuck on The Academy Is... and I've been listening to this song almost non stop for two days straight. And the video puts me in a really cheery mood. I mean just look at the lead singer's face. It seems to be genetically constructed to smile and therefore make other people smile. And when he sings it's like he's laughing and he basically looks like an overgrown kid. Or maybe it's just me. Oh and this is probably me imagining things, but when he smiles, he looks like a younger version of Robert Sean Leonard (Dr. James Wilson in House MD). Yes, yes, I'm still as obsessed as always with House MD (that probably will never change). And yes, I do realize that right now I sound like some crazed high school fangirl. Do I look like I care? Nope. Anyway it'll probably go away in maximum one week. Until then, here is About A Girl by The Academy Is... (I never know what punctuation to put after their name because a period after suspension marks just blends in and doesn't fulfill any purpose and anything else just looks weird...blah)

Analysis of a modern day common song

Changing from the philosophically-scientific tone of previous posts, I am now going to discus a song by The Academy Is...

It is not particularly critical of society (there's one deep line in the entire song) and, if I think about it, this post exists mostly because I like two lines in the song and the video is kind of different. What I mean by that is that it contrasts a sunny and cheery setting with nostalgic music. Usually, with a song like this, a scene with the singer standing in the rain or on the board of a cliff or at least falling on his knees while screaming his lungs out is a must. Here he seems so very detached as if everything is kept behind a mask. Though there is the whole "falling into the pool, I'll let myself drown because my life sucks bou hou hou" part which ruins the concept a tad bit, but overall it's a nice video and the rewind timeline is actually pretty cool (yes, I'm a sucker for non-linear, non-traditional timelines...I think it spices things up and keeps you awake during a movie or video in this case).

Now if I look at the lyrics, there are mainly 3 points of interest. Starting with the most shallow of the list (and ironically the reason I chose to waste half an hour of my life talking about this song), there are two lines in the song that just sound really good and flow nicely:

I am no gentleman, I can be a prick
And I do regret more than I admit

I am not going to analyze the consonants, vowels or rime scheme. This is not an English class so I can afford to just say that I like how it sounds and end it there.

Next, there's this other line with which they actually end the song (yes I know it's also repeated in the middle, but I find that it has the biggest effect at the end because the music fades and emphasis is put on the lyrics). I find it's a really cute imagery, even though they're talking about bugs. Though even that could be explained through the fact that the guy feels so small and unimportant in the girl's eyes that he compares himself to a fly.

I'll be with you wherever you go, through the eyes of a fly on a wall.

Finally, the one deep line in the song which is actually quite interesting says: Take the pain out of love and then love won't exist. Now this could be interpreted in a couple of ways.

1. The guy is a masochist and can't imagine his life without pain in the sense that love without pain doesn't exist (yeah yeah, I know what you're saying...not very likely). But actually it does make sense. When you're in love, you make yourself completely and utterly vulnerable in front of that other person and sooner or later you will get hurt whether intentionally or not, for the simple reason that we're only humans and nobody is perfect.

2. In order to be able to enjoy love to its fullest you need to overcome obstacles (hence the pain). Because if everything goes too well and there are never any arguments, at one point you start taking the other for granted, you forget to put effort in your relationship and you just end up drifting apart (I feel like somehow there's a flaw in that argument, but I'm too lazy to look for it right now).

3. I can't think of a third explanation but I'm sure there's something...

So there, I voluntarily made an analysis of a song. The world must be coming to an end. Maybe the Mayans messed up their calendar and the end of the world in not in 2012. Maybe, maybe...There was a saying that went somewhere along the lines of "Avec des si on metterait Paris en bouteille" which means with ifs we could put Paris in a bottle. And now I am rambling. Ok after this huge description/analysis here's the actual video:




You were the only face I'd ever known.
I was the light from the lamp on the floor,
and only as bright as you wanted me to be.
But, I am no gentleman, I can be a prick,
and I do regret more than I admit.
You have been followed back to the same place I sat with you drink for drink.
Take the pain out of love and then love won't exist.

Everything we had, everything we had,
everything we had, everything we had is no longer there.

It was the only place I'd never known.
Turned off the light on my way out the door.
I will be watching wherever you go,
through the eyes of a fly on the wall.
You have been followed back to the same place I sat with you drink for drink.
Take the pain out of love and then love won't exist.

Everything we had, everything we had,
everything we had, everything we had is no longer there, longer there.

You saw for yourself, the way it played out.
For you, I am blinded.
For you, I am blinded, for you.

I am no gentleman, I can be a prick.
And I do regret more than I admit.
You have been followed back to the same place I sat with you drink for drink.
Take the pain out of love and then love won't exist.

Everything we had, everything we had,
everything we had, everything we had.
Everything we had, everything we had,
everything we had...

I'll be with you wherever you go,
through the eyes of a fly on the wall.