JOURNAL 3 - Opening Your Blinds to the Negative Light

The song itself has an overall cheerful tune, but a sharp forcefulness in the way the singer delivers his lyrics, almost insisting upon the song's own message. "Fine" begins with the phrase: "Today has a way of scarring your eyes with negative light, but it's a disguise. I put on my shades and see through the lies" The speaker recognizes an unfortuante circumstance of the world around him, and dons "shades" to block himself from the reality around him, even deeming it a "lie" compared to his internal narrative.
In the beginning of my narrative, I was living with my parents, finding it extremely hard to survive day to day under my mother's nonsensical rules that had a detrimental effect on my own physical and mental well-being. In order to survive, I forced an extremely positive outlook, refusing to recognize my parent's abusive actions by distracting myself with a fictional DND campaign. As long as I could ignore my reality, it wouldn't "...be long until everything works out nice in the end." A dreamlike tone pervades the song, and marks the beginning of the diassociatve state I would begin to trap myself in in order to cope, stuck with my "shades on."

The tone of this song is nauseating, the dreamlike tone of the first song bumped up to the nth degree and stripped of its energy. At this point in the narrative I have moved out of my house, but the real meat of my problems have just begun. "Staring into glassy eyes. Mesmerized. There's a vintage thirst returning, but I'm sheltered by my channel-surfing" These lyrics can almost describe how I sheltered myself with an unreality, finding comfort in removing myself from my own life. It becomes apparent that life with my girlfriend is not what it had cracked up to be, and I start obsessing over DND more and more. I almost become nauseated by the thought of it, yet, I cannot seperate myself from it. The "vintage thirst" can be likened to my desire to return to the time period before I had moved away, a period that hurt me, but one I remembered for its blissful obliviousness.

I had just found out that I had been getting cheated on, and was forced to live with the person I had been cheated on with for a month. This song would play over a montage of that month. The tone provides an upbeat, calm contrast to the emotional turmoil I was experiencing at the time. "I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour, But heaven knows I'm miserable now." My "drunken hour" in this case would not be so literal, but an analogy of the disassociative haze I had been stuck in that broke upon the discovery of my girlfriend's unfaithfulness. A sudden clarity was thrust upon me, I was finally aware of how miserable I had been for so many years. "Heaven knows I'm miserable now." I was finally able to live my life in my own shoes, but at the cost of losing two of the closest people I had in my life.

The musician behind this song wrote it, from my understanding, to describe her feelings after having been cheated on. In it, she explores a more "empathetic" view of the person who had wronged her, and recognizes her own faults as a partner. In my own experience, I couldn't ever really hate my ex-partner. I understood why things had happened the way they did, and without accepting what she did as okay, I am able to recognize how isolated I had made her feel. "I haven't given you what you need, you wanted me, but couldn't reach me." My disassociation, and obsession with my coping mechanism, had alienated her and made her feel unseen. "Must be lonely loving someone trying to find their way out of a maze." This song paves the way, through understanding the actions of others, to finally understanding how my actions affected them and how badly they affected me in the past. The song reflects how the speaker and myself, with newfound clarity, found forgiveness and the ability to, at last, move forwards.

Concluding my narrative with the same musician who introduced the narrative just feels fitting. The song begins with a disorienting, hazy tone reflective of our first song, "Fine." The singer reflects their previous behavior in the line "We do, we do nothing but hold the window shut to keep the worry out," but then immediately follows their old mindset and actions with a confident chourus: "What will happen will happen whether I'm happy or sad. There are days to wake up for, there are dreams to be had." After the singer's old experiences or general cynical view of the world, they come to the conclusion that though the world will happen around them, indifferent to how they may feel, and life continues on. In my experience, I trapped myself in a mindset that would force me to disregard the negative around me, and just expect my life to improve as long as I maintained a happy outlook. Yet, my life crumbled around me at once, due in part to my own refusal to recognize problems that needed solving. It was due to this crumbling however, that I am more in touch with all aspects of my life, positive and negative. Whatever happens will happen, regardless of how much I try to keep the worry out. Yet, life will continue on around me, and I am able to now participate in it. "There are days to wake up for, and dreams to be had."