The soundtrack of my life, redux

A while back I wrote about Lacuna Coil and their (then-)latest album. Today I was reminded of this post, and went digging for it only to discover that I'd written it nearly two and a half years ago, and it was prophetic:

It's odd, the way you don't notice something slipping away until it's completely gone and suddenly comes back and smacks you in the face with its full force. The soundtrack of my life's been..well, silent. There are, of course, many small reasons, all fairly insignificant, but their cumulative repercussions have been fairly extensive. It's nice that I'm coming out of this extensive rut..

Over the past two years, the soundtrack of my life had indeed gone silent, squeezed out of me like so many other things, both large and small. And.. In recent weeks, it's come back in full force, with new layers and nuances filling new depths in my soul.

Once again, Lacuna Coil's haunting off-key lyrics and raw, barely-bridled power was a driving force; helping me punch through some particularly nasty walls. But perhaps more interesting is what I was cutting the Goth Metal with. I'd bounce between apparent extremes, dreamy ambient (Amethystium, Asura) to goth rock (Lacuna Coil, Evanescence (older)) to Enya to more rock (Vertical Horizon, Poets of the Fall, White Lion) to more goth rock... to Sarah McLachlan.

I think, more than anything else I rotated through, Sara McLachlan's discography had the greatest effect on me. She dropped out of sight at the peak of her career, coincidentally around the same time that I'd been going through the emotional trials of my college days. Aside from having an incredible voice, her music and especially lyrics deeply affected me, and over the years, even more so.

The first song of hers I heard was Possession. It was part of a televised Lilith Fair concert, playing in the background at a random "what are we going to do tonight?" gathering at a friend's dorm room. I didn't really hear the lyrics, or the music.. but the tone of it all caught my attention. Somehow or another I found out who the artist was, and thanks to the wonders that come from combining college students and a high-speed dorm network, quickly found some mp3s. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Possession remains the single more meaningful song I've heard; it touches me on many levels, including its more literal -- it was written about an experience McLachlan had with a stalker.

More recently, Drawn to the Rhythm and Wait, or as it was originally titled, Blackened Sky have been running through my mind. To quote the latter's chorus:

When all we wanted was the dream
to have and to hold that precious little thing
like every generation yields
the new born hope unjaded by their years

What's on my playlist right now? Last night I switched over to Prem Joshua. On a lark, I saw him in concert many years ago. And what a show it was! But that's a story for another time.

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