have you ever noticed that your music taste changes based on who you spend the most time with? when i was spending time with javin, my spirits were uplifted by rock music--seriously considered indie rock, alternative rock, etc. he even reintroduced me to soul (sam cooke) and brought me more in touch with previously loved classic rock (the beatles, big star, the doors).
now with ben, hip hop is back in my life in a big way. for a while, i dismissed it as a cheap and tasteless genre--forgetting the genius of tupac and biggy (even jay z) in the color-grey swirl of popular, sell-out, "hip hop" artists. but ben reminds me that there are many who keep the true spirit of hip hop alive--those who respect the movement as one stemmed from intelligence. it's an infiltration of knowledge into the masses (and there are masses).
unlike tupac and b.i.g., artists like kid cudi, kanye, and drake deliver more concentrated messages. departing from the ways of their rhetoric-filled predecessors, modern hip hoppers dare to boil it down.
apart from loving kid cudi's song (feat. MGMT), Pursuit Of Happiness, i love the video.
here 'tis:
this one's close to home for me. "tell me what you know about dreaming."
ReplyDeletei often think about life in terms of a spectrum between dreams and wakefulness.
sometimes it seems like my dreams pull me away from reality, into my head. sometimes, they seem to put me in touch with reality...those aspects of reality which hit me the hardest, move me the most. i guess that's what a fantasy is. but fantasies are sneaky i think, and can do just as much as nightmares to keep the mind loop going. it's just like the video. when i try to escape from my mind, to open the metaphorical doors that lead out from my head, they just end up opening up into a different part of my head. entrances to the same space, disguised as exits.
"tell me what you know about the night terrors, every night, waking up at 5am cold sweat, to the sky."
sometimes it feels more like a push-pull between fantasy and reality with me in the middle, struggling to keep my bearings in a storm where imagination collides with perception and leaves me wondering which is which. through it all i'm hanging on to the window sill while the wind pulls at my legs, thinking "i'll be fine once i get it...i'll be good."
i'm on the pursuit of happiness.
i'm on the pursuit of sanity.
sometimes things are good, sometimes things are bad, but all i know is that i want to stop the looping.
when i get tired of struggling, i realize that i am happiest when i "fight no more, and let these things just be, be, be."
when i'm calm, that's where i like to settle. "i will fight no more, and let these things just be."
and yet, i don't like to give up. i don't want to stop struggling. i wonder why that is. i wonder if it's wise. i wonder if it matters. i suppose that surrender and giving up can be two different things, that's its semantics...like letting go versus shrinking and caving.
however it is, there is something beautiful about not giving up. which is why this one is close to home, too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE_8VE19rCE
"at the end of the day my momma told me dont let no one break me, let no one break me
at end of the day, day, nobody, nobody, ever could stop me ever could stop me
at the end of the day, day you cant regret it if you were trying, if you were trying
at the end of the day i'm walking with a heart of a lion."