#199 The ghost in the back of my head
I have a record of music I have listened to since 2006. It’s logical that I was curious about what I was listening to when Janne started her job in Kuusalu. And it’s not unusual that I’ll be triggered by any music from my past.
At the time, I had discovered the British band Foals. “Mountain at my Gates”, a popular single in 2015, can well describe me these days:
I see a mountain at my gates
I see it more and more each day
What I give, it takes away
Whether I go or when I stay
The whole song is about fate, seeing her less each day, about dark clouds gathering around.
I have an overwhelming need to understand as much as possible. During that time, I learned that Foals plays a genre called Math Rock. This is a type of music with unusual rhythmic structures and odd time signatures.
I called Janne so I could tell her of my findings. She just stood by my desk on a Saturday afternoon and listened to me and that music. As a musician, she was trying to follow the tempo and figuring out if what I was telling her made sense. She got me.
Of course, it hurts losing her. I needed to share with her even the tiniest fact I’d learn. This was a regular occurrence in our day-to-day. She got to know me in full and still loved me.
My favorite song by Foals is called “Spanish Sahara” which I discovered around the same time. I hadn’t heard it in years, but as I played it today I understood that this song is about grief. Some descriptions even suggest the desert as a symbol of death.
So I walked into the haze
And a million dirty waves
Now I see you lying there
Like a lilo losing air, air
Black rocks and the shoreline surf
Still dead summer I cannot bear
A lilo is just an air mattress used for camping. This symbolism has always been hiding in this song. Is this why every time I played it, it touched me to the point of shedding tears? It surely will endlessly do that now.
Forget the horror here
Forget the horror here
Leave it all down here
It’s future rust, it’s future dust
A choir of furies in your head
A choir of furies in your bed
I’m the ghost in the back of your head
‘Cause I am
