Ambushed by unexpected emotion

also, get this: my roommate's mom was in a convent, like: a full-on nun & she heard "turn turn turn" by the byrds on the radio & took it as a calling to start a secular lifestyle. incidentally, the song is a bible verse, right? i love that story. it's really ...poetic. i was like: "dude, you wouldn't exist if weren't for that song. ever think of that?!". that kinda flipped his wig.

Even though I'm a political cynic, and I hate the course of the current administration, and I think a lot of us are truly deranged, the religious right is ruining it for the rest of us.

That damn song still makes me tear. Oh, and "America the Beautiful." No matter where, no matter when.

My brother and I got along uncommonly well as children, and my parents didn't neglect me for him, so I'm not drawing on that particular experience. I guess there's the universal feeling of being misunderstood. But actually, when Ashlee addresses that - "So if you're listening, there's so much more to me you haven't seen" - she's lovable: nakedly vulnerable yet audacious.

i was feeling anxious and uneasy the other day and put on my bloody valentine's 'lose my breath'. it somehow made me feel even more upset.

t.A.T.u., "Show Me Love":

"Like a game of pick-up sticks / played by f#*!ing lunatics"

Dunno why, ambushed every time.

The break in Chrissie Hynde's voice on the line "won't let nobody hurt you" in "I'll Stand By You" always brings a lump to my throat.

The perfect combination of song and movie can really mess me up. I know a lot of people hate it, but the Aimee Mann "Wise Up" segment in Magnolia is achingly, beautifully sad. Hell, I get choked up at the end of Koyaanisqatsi.

On the joyful end, during the live performance of "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" by Chaka Khan and Montell Jordan in the Standing in the Shadow of Motown documentary, when the band hits that crescendo and the gospel choir enters...tearful bliss.

Radio 2 are right now playing a song by ACKER BILK. He has just started singing. It is a good thing Robin C is not listening, or he might be getting very angry!!

"was that the trees-a-rustlin'? Or the hinges of the gate?/Or Ernie's ghostly gold-tops a-rattlin' in their crate?"

They played Acker Bilk on Radio 2 last night!

acker bilk was on local news last week, he has just celebrated his 80th birthday (i think).

Little April Showers from the Bambi Soundtrack recently on a TV ad, kills me totally.

In my elementary school there was this "popular" kid I'll just call Matt. Matt was tall, athletic, liked by girls, etc. etc. I was unathletic and somewhat picked on in school, and he was among a group of kids that sometimes picked on me. He wasn't the worst of the bunch, but he was mean sometimes, and I resented him very much, in part just because of that cosmic unfairness of there being a tall, charismatic, athletic blonde guy who everyone liked, while of course so few people saw all of MY obvious good qualities, or didn't appreciate my intelligence, yada yada, bitter nerd stuff etc.

When we were in fourth or fifth grade, his father suddenly passed away. I remember my parents said something to me about how I should offer my condolences to him. I remember it seemed like the whole grade was abuzz with his father's death. I think in my resentment I imagined that if *my* father died, people wouldn't be acting as sad about it, this was all just because he was popular! Part of me still knew the right thing to do would be to just go and say "I'm sorry about your father Matt." But I kept thinking about doing it and then backing away, and in the end, I never said a word.

I doubt if he even kept track of who offered him condolences or ever noticed I didn't, but this bothered me for a long time after, and I felt very guilty about it, although I never really knew the guy past seventh or eighth grade and eventually forgot it completely.

Today I was browsing facebook, and it suggested him in the "people you may know" category, and I clicked out of curiosity. There are pictures of him, looking like a very regular adult dude with his wife, and he has a toddler, about my daughter's age. Somehow when I saw this I started to tear up. I almost want to message the guy and say something about it, but the last time someone did one of those "long lost apology" things to me, it was just out of nowhere and totally surprising.

i get this, to a degree. i felt the "bitter nerd stuff etc." in jr. high and high school.

you're a better person than me, because i don't think i'd have had later regrets about failing to offer condolences. i have thought, in retrospect, that maybe some of the injustices done to me were the product of my imagination, or exaggerated in my mind because of my own insecurities. but they felt bad enough to me, at the time, that they lingered in my mind long into my adulthood, and even remain today. hard to forgive or forget, i've found, even if i've been blessed with a lot of good things since that should make me let go of past grievances.

I felt more guilty about my inner justifications for not saying anything than for not saying anything.

Like my perceived slights were somehow bigger than the fact that this kid lost his dad.

fair enough. but that doesn't undo the slights, or lessen their impact on you, either. people -- even high school tormentors -- are complicated.

The thing is I wouldn't call this kid in particular my "tormentor." He was a popular kid, and he probably said mean stuff to me more than a few times, but I saw him more generally as being of that group that I felt excluded and rejected me. It's not like he was beating me up and stuffing me into lockers all the time though.

i'm usually willing to give myself and everybody else a free pass for any perceived moral failings done before, say, age 14? not sure where the upper limit is but slighting this kid in 4th or 5th grade definitely isn't a big deal. (a tangential question i often think of us whether kids are really morally responsible for anything) though i can totally identify with getting that sudden onset of emotion from something that previously seemed really buried.

I think it was also the combo of "this guy lost his dad and now is a dad" and "he has a kid my kid's age" combined with the other stuff

a tangential question i often think of us whether kids are really morally responsible for anything

yeah, they definitely can be, at a certain age. the 13 year-old who set fire to his classmate, because it seemed funny. the 15 year-old who tells another girl, via social media, to kill herself. the army of kids who bully and torment their peers.

i realize these are extreme examples, but they're also valid examples.

idk, I knew what the right thing to do was and I didn't do it. I don't see how that's not enough for moral responsibility.

i get your point, don't misunderstand. fwiw, and from a distance, i think you're being too hard on yourself.

I think I probably would have been about equally as much a dick/nice guy in elementary school as this guy was if I had been in his position. I don't think I was actually an especially nice guy. I was polite and smart, but I had lots of my own insensitivity and selfishness, still do.

xp yea i think when it gets into teenage years i don't really know, it get's complicated since teens are in such a weird mix of childhood and adulthood. like i said i don't know the upper limit. but when i reflect on guilt or embarrassment i still feel from stuff that i did in my youth, i try to really think about whether i was really responsible at all. i mean, how morally developed is a 12-year old? like what was empty or lacking in my life as a kid that made me treat someone a particular way, you know? kids may have a moral sensibility but it's totally undeveloped and i'm not sure it's clear that that translates to a moral responsibility. fwiw i have zero expertise in child psychology or moral psychology.

i have zero expertise in child psychology or moral psychology

me, either. i speak only from my own experiences and as the father of a 12 -- soon to be 13 -- year old daughter, who i worry about all the time, even if she seems so much more emotionally together than i did at her age.

(as i sometimes say, my invisible child psychology degree hangs framed on the wall, next to my invisible engineering degree.)

when I analyze it, I think part of my emotion is the feeling of wanting to let go of all that resentment

my ford KA -- in the family since 1999, mainly used by a friend the last 2xyrs -- just went off to be cubed

i am not a wreck but i am sad: in 2007 i travelled the vertical length of france and back in that trusty little thing w/o mishap (lol except for backing into someone and scrunching up their driver's door in the languedoc hamlet of ASPIRAN)

when the saxes come in on this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oanAeie_Tag

In about 2006 I saw Brian Wilson and the Wondermints doing the rejigged Smile in Sydney. It was all beautifully performed and Brian himself was kind of a curio on stage, present but not quite, as the elaborate music unfolded around him. Then they started "Surf's Up" and it suddenly hit me that this man's life had been a shattered wreck from the time he wrote this song until now, and here he was performing it in all its glory as an aged, frail man, it just hit me like a hammer and I bawled in my seat.

So there I am, cleaning my kitchen on a Saturday afternoon, decided to have a little nostalgia trip by putting on Parklife. Singing along to 'To The End' I hear my voice crack and before I know it I'm standing in the middle of the room weeping.. Sometimes you think you're over someone..

Surfs Up is such a masterpiece, so much feeling

Meadow Soprano graduating high school. She reminds me of my daughter.

Bawled.

A couple of months ago I found a nice little animation that Queen had made for when they reissued News Of The World, for the song "All Dead, All Dead", I never realised it was about Brian May's long-gone childhood pet cat, because I'm colossally soft and the little cat in the animation is very sweet, I just broke into bits out of nowhere.

https://bsmrocks.bandcamp.com/album/i-spent-the-winter-writing-songs-about-getting-better

in 'white sheep':

I hate myself for feeling this way
'Cause if my dad showed me anything, it's that anyone can change
He went from always angry, smoking a pack a day
To calling me up to say he’s proud of the life that I made

i'm havin a fuckin cat's in the cradle moment over here or something