I'm not talking about songs that have saved my life to the extreme point of that tumblr story, where someone's "friend" was in the bath about to commit suicide, but "brown-eyed girl" came on the radio and they realised that if they killed themself, they would never be able to hear the song again. In fact, I recently heard the song for the first time at a bar. It's not worth living over.
What I mean by "songs that have saved my life" are songs that I have relied on in very dark points (mostly over the last year lol) where I otherwise probably would have killed myself.
Wet - Don't Wanna Be Your Girl
In the days, weeks after I decided to get away from K, I still had to live with him (literally lol). He was playing a lot of mind games, trying to tell our (now only mutual) friends shit, on top of the fact that I had to learn to live without him, something I hadn't known for two years. It was very very hard, but the direct words of this song, and the mellow, beautifully solitary sound let me know I could be on my own. I didn't want to be his girl anymore, and I would be better for it. Nevermind the complicated semantics of what being his girl did and didn't mean. The openness of the opening bars, and expansive setting and pan-out shots of the (beautiful, elegant) music video let me know that my life had opened up, and I would be okay)/
There were other songs that served this same function: My Boy by Billie Elish (the lyrics of which match him PERFECTLY); 505 by Arctic Monkeys, which provided an instruction manual on how I would operate the rest of my life free.(I actually wrote a poem about that - "rose on black", which I posted here). But this one was the main one. I remember one morning-afternoon, I was wearing my light-washed ripped mum jeans and a white crop top, on my way to the Civic post office. I was listening to Don't Wanna Be Your Girl through my earphones on my phone in my red canvas tote bag given to me by Realisation Par, and the ~waves~ of the song (I don't know how to describe it technically) eked out into the air around me, the sky, the bus stop I walked past, the cement - and I was a happy I hadn't known until then.
(Still now over a year later I picture him reading this, snarling, and my hubris disintegrates).
Lil Peep - Awful Things
As I think was (hopefully) glaringly obvious in this poem, I struggle a lot with my science degree. Not academically - existentially. As ridiculous as it sounds. I used to love learning the tiny molecular-sized little secrets of our body, but, for a long while now, the diagrams and the graphs and the powerpoints just make me think about how none of it matters - how thin and empty life is. And I have this aversion to nearly everyone in my classes - they're all such fucking nerds, fucking losers, all they have is inside jokes about science that half the reason their laughing for is the pride that they get it. Rocking up to class at like 8am in a grungey / insta-worthy outfit and grouchy docs, with my laptop full of other things - I always felt very at odds. There were some people like me though, that I took solace in - Eben, for the large part, though he never came to lectures, and Mae, whom Brent never treated well enough.
And awful things is for us, for me. Not so much the song itself, but its music video. I'm not the only person who's felt like an outsider in class - and they turned it into triumph.
Lil Peep - benz truck
Okay, as brilliant as this song and music video is, I can't say the lyrics were life-saving, per se. But this was the first Peep song I ever heard, the one that entranced me, and paved the way to the songs that have saved my life more times than I count.
Each one articulates the despair slightly differently, meaning there was always one for exactly the kind of depression and/or anxiety I felt that was driving me downwards. Now, it didn't help me because I was like "wow, I'm not alone." I know already that lots of people experience the exact same thing as me. But Peep was successful, and talented, and appreciated for his art. So hearing these songs that sayang-ed me to sleep, knowing what he became through these songs, I would tell myself that I couldn't die till I achieved success too. And thus I live.
What I mean by "songs that have saved my life" are songs that I have relied on in very dark points (mostly over the last year lol) where I otherwise probably would have killed myself.
Wet - Don't Wanna Be Your Girl
In the days, weeks after I decided to get away from K, I still had to live with him (literally lol). He was playing a lot of mind games, trying to tell our (now only mutual) friends shit, on top of the fact that I had to learn to live without him, something I hadn't known for two years. It was very very hard, but the direct words of this song, and the mellow, beautifully solitary sound let me know I could be on my own. I didn't want to be his girl anymore, and I would be better for it. Nevermind the complicated semantics of what being his girl did and didn't mean. The openness of the opening bars, and expansive setting and pan-out shots of the (beautiful, elegant) music video let me know that my life had opened up, and I would be okay)/
There were other songs that served this same function: My Boy by Billie Elish (the lyrics of which match him PERFECTLY); 505 by Arctic Monkeys, which provided an instruction manual on how I would operate the rest of my life free.(I actually wrote a poem about that - "rose on black", which I posted here). But this one was the main one. I remember one morning-afternoon, I was wearing my light-washed ripped mum jeans and a white crop top, on my way to the Civic post office. I was listening to Don't Wanna Be Your Girl through my earphones on my phone in my red canvas tote bag given to me by Realisation Par, and the ~waves~ of the song (I don't know how to describe it technically) eked out into the air around me, the sky, the bus stop I walked past, the cement - and I was a happy I hadn't known until then.
(Still now over a year later I picture him reading this, snarling, and my hubris disintegrates).
Lil Peep - Awful Things
As I think was (hopefully) glaringly obvious in this poem, I struggle a lot with my science degree. Not academically - existentially. As ridiculous as it sounds. I used to love learning the tiny molecular-sized little secrets of our body, but, for a long while now, the diagrams and the graphs and the powerpoints just make me think about how none of it matters - how thin and empty life is. And I have this aversion to nearly everyone in my classes - they're all such fucking nerds, fucking losers, all they have is inside jokes about science that half the reason their laughing for is the pride that they get it. Rocking up to class at like 8am in a grungey / insta-worthy outfit and grouchy docs, with my laptop full of other things - I always felt very at odds. There were some people like me though, that I took solace in - Eben, for the large part, though he never came to lectures, and Mae, whom Brent never treated well enough.
And awful things is for us, for me. Not so much the song itself, but its music video. I'm not the only person who's felt like an outsider in class - and they turned it into triumph.
Lil Peep - benz truck
Okay, as brilliant as this song and music video is, I can't say the lyrics were life-saving, per se. But this was the first Peep song I ever heard, the one that entranced me, and paved the way to the songs that have saved my life more times than I count.
worry bout yourself baby ill be good
i just wanna die in peace tonight
you can see it in my face so i wear my hood
i'm a crybaby
i can't be out lately
ten years ago i went blind
i've been on my own since age nine
is anybody out there? can anybody hear me?
help me find a way to pass the time
everybody's telling me life's short but i wanna die
everybody wanna be me till I pull up and they meet me
ima die slow sweetie, i ain't never had a meaning
just another fucking junkie, drain my blood but don't be greedy
leave some liquid for the centipedes, they eat away my memory
this is the song they played when i crashed into the wall
...
this is the life i made and i can't go back to fall
back to fall, back to everyone i ever knew at all
back to small town blues and not a clue of what's going on
back to old routines and wedding rings and living at the mall
Each one articulates the despair slightly differently, meaning there was always one for exactly the kind of depression and/or anxiety I felt that was driving me downwards. Now, it didn't help me because I was like "wow, I'm not alone." I know already that lots of people experience the exact same thing as me. But Peep was successful, and talented, and appreciated for his art. So hearing these songs that sayang-ed me to sleep, knowing what he became through these songs, I would tell myself that I couldn't die till I achieved success too. And thus I live.
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