The passion, the fire! It's back!
Somehow, tonight I felt born again.
I'm not wholly sure how to express this, so please forgive me. As with everything else in my life, my actual understanding is negligible, but here goes. I've always been a competitive guy, and a perfectionist - this is a dangerous combination, as if I'm seriously after something I don't take no for an answer, and that makes me a bugger to compete against. Ask the many debating opponents of mine who have crumbled beneath my blind fury if you want proof.
What I felt tonight I always believed was limited to when I'm debating. What I find when I am - in person, having had a chance to prepare an argument, and in a formal context - is that I can get so fired up by it all that my passion becomes self sustaining. I put my everything into it, on every level, and reach a new level of excellence in the process. Uncontrolled emotion is naturally a dangerous thing, and I've always questioned my emotional stability, but this is different. It's focussed. Upon a singular goal I look, and for it I strive. I think of nothing more than what I'm doing and accept nothing less than victory. Where I do go wrong with this is that I don't find myself constrained in any way. Moderation in argument? What's that? This is the reason I was accused of fascism so often during my competitive debating days - by making more and more controversial and extreme points I was satiating myself, feeding the passion which drove my argument in the first place. While I never quite lost sight of where I was - I was extremely successful, and would not have been if I had escaped the point in doing this - I did find myself open to justifiable accusations of extremism.
But you know what? I loved it. It was the best feeling on earth. A 100% natural high, driven purely by emotion, with a come down that leaves me craving it more and more until I just burn out and mentally - even physically - can't go on anymore. The exhaustion has no downside though, it doesn't leave me regretful, or mournful, or thinking in any way negatively whatsoever - and this from me, who could find downsides in world peace or finding the Garden of Eden. It's just bliss. For obvious reasons I can't say whether or not it's better than sex, but I'd imagine that on a certain level at least it is.
And yet...those days were 5 years ago. I've not been able to debate competitively, and my presence in the auditorium, my natural orating ability finds itself unused, with no outlet. Yeah, I can shout and scream on AltNation or whatever, but it's a futile attempt to express what I need to express. I've not got a good track record in debates there, which is due to a number of things. Online, logic should theoretically be the main one (since I can't influence people pyschologically with a stirring speech) but of course that isn't the case. Regardless, that feeling is something I've never been truly able to experience again.
I guess I've tried to get it back with other ways of expressing the emotion I feel like I do hunger and thirst. Dancing is these days a very good equivalent. The only rival for happiness for that feeling is when I'm dancing, and although alcohol can help it's not essential. Thursday proved that. But it's still not quite the same, on some level. It's possible that there are drugs that could replicate the emotional release I'm trying to describe, but I don't know. I dare say if I knew for a fact that it would do it I'd be tempted to try them, despite my anti-drugs chance. But then what chance no illeffects whatsoever? Zero, I reckon. A natural high is much healthier in that regard.
And yet...tonight, I finally felt it again. The other day I tried to post a general account of recent events, but failed as I succumbed to negativity. Yet since then, somehow I've found something in me. I've been listening again to Within Temptation.
After several weeks listening to nothing other than the new Nightwish album, which is of course just awesome, I felt the need to go back again to their great rivals. Not that either band would admit it of course. Something about symphonic metal bands is that none of them seem willing to ever admit that there are others in the genre. Each prefers to spin something about it being in a genre of its own, with a variety of labels and sub-labels applied to make them appear distinct. To a degree this is valid - there are most definitely differences - but there are also similarities, and there's no denying both WT and Nightwish are symphonic metal, that great fusion of orchestra and metal.
The two bands actually formed at the same time, although Nightwish have been more prolific over their 10 year existence, and have singularly defined the genre as their own. WT have been a little lower profile, with slightly fewer releases, although this doesn't justify their some-time designation as Nightwish clones.
Naturally, there are interesting comparisons to be made between the two. I can't be arsed doing that, but suffice to say I see Nightwish as somehow "cleaner" - it's more polished, more professional, and more complete. And yet to a degree it's precisely the fact that WT come up short in those areas that make them so appealing. Excessive cleanliness can ruin a pub, and so it can bring down a band. Don't get me wrong - Nightwish are among my favourite bands - but I'm still not sure whether I prefer them or WT. What WT have is a better singer. God, I could get lynched for saying that, especially claiming as I correctly do that I'm still a Nightwish fan. But I was never a Tarja fan, per se. She was an opera singer who did rock. The new singer, Annette Olzon, is a pop-rock singer who does opera. Which is IMO the way to go. Sharon den Adel, the WT lead, is without question a rock singer who can also do opera. Her voice is more flexible than that of Tarja - with only one Olzen album to Nightwish's name I can't really make a protracted comparison of her and that makes it easier to emote with. When you hear den Adel sing, you can truly hear her voice changing with the music, as if she truly believes it herself, and I think that's missing with Nightwish to a large degree. Even Olzen still doesn't achieve it in the same way WT do every time, and in most recent album The Heart of Everything it's particularly noticable.
The point about the music is that I've been reminded of what I love about symphonic metal by listening to WT again, firstly The Silent Force and now The Heart of Everything, which I'd criminally underestimated before. It's the raw power and passion. Fuck your R&B/hip hop bollocks, real music to me is the kind that picks you up, carries you with it for miles and miles into the middle of nowhere, then drops you to the ground from 10,000 feet. You're left wondering what the hell hit you, and when you can do it again. I can barely listen to the stuff without moving about, although that's something with music generally for me. I seldom sit in the flat and listen to music, because I need to be moving. It's a kind of dancing, for when I can't actually dance, although if I am dancing it's even better.
And in the last couple of days, it's had that impact on me more and more. I can't understand why, but it's hitting me harder and faster, and I just can't get enough of it. I've never had more appreciation for a band in my life I don't think. I know it's not as polished as Nightwish, but there seems to be more of a metal side to it which actually works better with this sort of stuff a lot of the time. Fair play to Nightwish with a more Celtic influence in their most recent album, but sometimes it really is guitar solos you want not cello solos - and on Final Destination, where a guitar rhythm becomes a solo and then sigues back into a rhythm for the final chorus and outro WT provide.
Yes, this is relevant.
I don't know how I got the fire back, but it's been in the last couple of days whilst listening to this stuff. And tonight it just happened. It was at table tennis, the uni club I run. It was the last half hour and we were playing Top Table - 4 tables (or as many as we have, but that was it tonight) and everyone plays a game on one of the tables, then you go up if you win, down if you lose, with a top and bottom designated. Very fun, although this wasn't the variant where as soon as one game ends all of them do. I thought it was my being used to Bingo that caused my very rapid play, but soon realised it wasn't. Before I go any further I should say I'd had a successful evening. A training session with Yvonne was a disaster, but once we got into actual games with her, her boyfriend Robbie, and our coach Gordon, I quickly dominated and won everything - an all play all with Robbie and Yvonne resulted in Yvonne beating Robbie and me beating both, and a doubles round robin in which we each played with each other against each other resulted in me winning each of the three games - leaving the others with just a single win each (the one they played with me). Quite confidence boosting, even though I've always been better at doubles than singles anyway (my sole inter-Universities victory was in doubles).
Anyway, playing Bingo style wasn't why I was playing fast. I won my first game (against Robbie, we were on the top table being two of the worst, even though I'm better than Yvonne, but I was hardly complaining, it basically guaranteed me a fairly easy win) but then came up against 3 of the best we have. I predictably lost them all, but rather than the standard humiliations they give me - I was doing well! I didn't lose by any worse than 11-7, and was moving well, hittng some decent shots and actually scoring a high success rate on those chancer shots to nothing I like - the ones I want to be able to do consistently but find it hard to (especially as setting up scenarios for practising them is hard). The highlight came against Joel, a very good player I've never beaten. I fell behing early, but eventually led 10-7, only to succumb 12-10 after he returned what I thought was a won smash. Oh well - very impressive, and it was then that I realised what I was feeling.
Yvonne also noticed it - I'm a decent bit better than her, but as is generally the way at the club tend to dumb my play down a bit to avoid humilation (I'm fairly sure Joel did that with me, but wasn't bothered as much as I somewhat hypocritically usually am). Not tonight. WIthin about 30 seconds I was 9-2 up, as I played as well as I could. I was pegged back a bit, but it was game-5 a few seconds later, and by this point I was so fired up I think I was actually scaring her a little. After that came a typical result against Jasper. Damn Chinese and their pengrip style of play. I always struggle against it, and although the game was pretty typical, I ws fuming as I was expecting more tonight. Still, I annihilated Yvonne again in the final game, condemning her to the bottom table, then it was just friendly banter whilst we cleared up and left.
But I'd lost nothing of the passion. The walk home took place of course to the blistering sound of WT in my ears, and I felt invincible. The walk itself was the release for the self sustaining, self perpetuating emotion. I was there again. If someone had shoved a lectern and a speech under my nose as I walked I would have sigued seamlessly into a fully fledged no prisoners taken debate without question. Christ i've not felt that way since I was 17.
Wait. That's not true. I have felt it since then, in isolated pockets. But the problem is I've not been able to do anything with it, and when that's the case I end up looking like a prat. The smoking ban debate on AltNation is one example, around the time I was insinuating smokers human rights should come second in consideration to those of non-smokers. Bullshit, of course, but I was satiating myself by shouting out such things.
But none of that was on a par with tonight. A full hour it lasted. Yes, I faded a bit, but like I said, the comedown brings a desire for more and I came back in force. I'm even doing it right now. Just as commenting on my last entry made me sad again, writing this, listening as I am to WT, is spurring me on. Of course, I'm tired and it's very very late so nothing will happen (been typing this for the better part of an hour and a half now) but I still remember what it feels like. And I like it.
Ok, big question - why is this happening? Answer - not a bloody clue mate.
Hmm. That last entry was on Sunday afternoon. Later on Sunday something very interesting happened. A random added me to MSN. I asked who it was, and the resulting conversation lasted - get this - 6 hours. Seriously. It seems it was someone from Dundee who is moving to Glasgow in a couple of weeks, but has the problem of not knowing anyone. Fair enough, I had that issue when I moved from Dumfries and it took me a year and a half to solve that one. She's found the forum, and joined, and I've been recommending through personal experience that she's done the right thing and that it is a good way to make friends. She found me through something (don't know what) that I posted - note that that's how Rach found me originally - and, get this, my music taste. Yeah. Apparently, citing the likes of Nightwish, WT and Lost Prophets, it's awesome! She's right of course hehe ;)
The point is that we seemed to get on pretty damn well in that convo. What's interesting is the things we seem to have in common. Music taste I've already mentioned, but there's also things like her social situation - leaving a crap town redeemed only by a few cool people for a good one but where she knows nobody (as I was with Dumfries) - her attitudes to stuff like trust (analogous to me, her best friends are all male, but it would seem incestuous to have a relationship with them) and her sense of humour.
Remembering how much what Rach did for me meant to me when she basically introduced me to everybody after I met her, I'm naturally interested in the opportunity to do likewise for someone else in a similar situation. But what I'm also aware of is that there is a gap in my life for a close friend who has in common with me the sort of things she does. It's always been a bit of a shame really that none of my good friends actually shares my music taste, and just generally a lot of the stuff she was saying about herself could just as easily have been said about me.
I don't want to jump the gun here, or presume too much about someone with whom my entire "relationship" has been a single (admittedly long and indepth) MSN conversation. But I've no reason to suspect this isn't legit, and assuming it is, well, to quote Casablanca, "this could be the start of a beautiful friendship" It could well happen, I mean all my best friends have become close to me more or less instantly, either at the time I met them or very suddenly later on - that applies to both the Bunnies, the Fionas, and Scott. Could lightening strike a 5th time in Glasgow when she moves here in a couple of weeks? Is potentially misguided anticipation of this the reason for my change in mood? Who knows. It may well be contributing.
Ultimately, tonight I have reawakened in myself a fire and a passion for life I thought was beyond resucitation. And I'm not sure I've ever felt better in all my life for it. All I need to do now is find some outlet for this passion. It would be soul-destroying to let it go to waste, that's for damn certain.
I'm away to bed now, but I go filled with, yes, some negativity, about various things, but also high hopes, even if I don't know exactly what for.
Awesomeness.
EDIT: Please ignore the multiple cuts - I was having problems cutting it correctly - there's only one single (but hugely long) entry underneath all that, and it does kinda cover similar stuff (aside from an offtopic bit about Nightwish, which I was going to cut seperately but didn't in the end)
I'm not wholly sure how to express this, so please forgive me. As with everything else in my life, my actual understanding is negligible, but here goes. I've always been a competitive guy, and a perfectionist - this is a dangerous combination, as if I'm seriously after something I don't take no for an answer, and that makes me a bugger to compete against. Ask the many debating opponents of mine who have crumbled beneath my blind fury if you want proof.
What I felt tonight I always believed was limited to when I'm debating. What I find when I am - in person, having had a chance to prepare an argument, and in a formal context - is that I can get so fired up by it all that my passion becomes self sustaining. I put my everything into it, on every level, and reach a new level of excellence in the process. Uncontrolled emotion is naturally a dangerous thing, and I've always questioned my emotional stability, but this is different. It's focussed. Upon a singular goal I look, and for it I strive. I think of nothing more than what I'm doing and accept nothing less than victory. Where I do go wrong with this is that I don't find myself constrained in any way. Moderation in argument? What's that? This is the reason I was accused of fascism so often during my competitive debating days - by making more and more controversial and extreme points I was satiating myself, feeding the passion which drove my argument in the first place. While I never quite lost sight of where I was - I was extremely successful, and would not have been if I had escaped the point in doing this - I did find myself open to justifiable accusations of extremism.
But you know what? I loved it. It was the best feeling on earth. A 100% natural high, driven purely by emotion, with a come down that leaves me craving it more and more until I just burn out and mentally - even physically - can't go on anymore. The exhaustion has no downside though, it doesn't leave me regretful, or mournful, or thinking in any way negatively whatsoever - and this from me, who could find downsides in world peace or finding the Garden of Eden. It's just bliss. For obvious reasons I can't say whether or not it's better than sex, but I'd imagine that on a certain level at least it is.
And yet...those days were 5 years ago. I've not been able to debate competitively, and my presence in the auditorium, my natural orating ability finds itself unused, with no outlet. Yeah, I can shout and scream on AltNation or whatever, but it's a futile attempt to express what I need to express. I've not got a good track record in debates there, which is due to a number of things. Online, logic should theoretically be the main one (since I can't influence people pyschologically with a stirring speech) but of course that isn't the case. Regardless, that feeling is something I've never been truly able to experience again.
I guess I've tried to get it back with other ways of expressing the emotion I feel like I do hunger and thirst. Dancing is these days a very good equivalent. The only rival for happiness for that feeling is when I'm dancing, and although alcohol can help it's not essential. Thursday proved that. But it's still not quite the same, on some level. It's possible that there are drugs that could replicate the emotional release I'm trying to describe, but I don't know. I dare say if I knew for a fact that it would do it I'd be tempted to try them, despite my anti-drugs chance. But then what chance no illeffects whatsoever? Zero, I reckon. A natural high is much healthier in that regard.
And yet...tonight, I finally felt it again. The other day I tried to post a general account of recent events, but failed as I succumbed to negativity. Yet since then, somehow I've found something in me. I've been listening again to Within Temptation.
After several weeks listening to nothing other than the new Nightwish album, which is of course just awesome, I felt the need to go back again to their great rivals. Not that either band would admit it of course. Something about symphonic metal bands is that none of them seem willing to ever admit that there are others in the genre. Each prefers to spin something about it being in a genre of its own, with a variety of labels and sub-labels applied to make them appear distinct. To a degree this is valid - there are most definitely differences - but there are also similarities, and there's no denying both WT and Nightwish are symphonic metal, that great fusion of orchestra and metal.
The two bands actually formed at the same time, although Nightwish have been more prolific over their 10 year existence, and have singularly defined the genre as their own. WT have been a little lower profile, with slightly fewer releases, although this doesn't justify their some-time designation as Nightwish clones.
Naturally, there are interesting comparisons to be made between the two. I can't be arsed doing that, but suffice to say I see Nightwish as somehow "cleaner" - it's more polished, more professional, and more complete. And yet to a degree it's precisely the fact that WT come up short in those areas that make them so appealing. Excessive cleanliness can ruin a pub, and so it can bring down a band. Don't get me wrong - Nightwish are among my favourite bands - but I'm still not sure whether I prefer them or WT. What WT have is a better singer. God, I could get lynched for saying that, especially claiming as I correctly do that I'm still a Nightwish fan. But I was never a Tarja fan, per se. She was an opera singer who did rock. The new singer, Annette Olzon, is a pop-rock singer who does opera. Which is IMO the way to go. Sharon den Adel, the WT lead, is without question a rock singer who can also do opera. Her voice is more flexible than that of Tarja - with only one Olzen album to Nightwish's name I can't really make a protracted comparison of her and that makes it easier to emote with. When you hear den Adel sing, you can truly hear her voice changing with the music, as if she truly believes it herself, and I think that's missing with Nightwish to a large degree. Even Olzen still doesn't achieve it in the same way WT do every time, and in most recent album The Heart of Everything it's particularly noticable.
The point about the music is that I've been reminded of what I love about symphonic metal by listening to WT again, firstly The Silent Force and now The Heart of Everything, which I'd criminally underestimated before. It's the raw power and passion. Fuck your R&B/hip hop bollocks, real music to me is the kind that picks you up, carries you with it for miles and miles into the middle of nowhere, then drops you to the ground from 10,000 feet. You're left wondering what the hell hit you, and when you can do it again. I can barely listen to the stuff without moving about, although that's something with music generally for me. I seldom sit in the flat and listen to music, because I need to be moving. It's a kind of dancing, for when I can't actually dance, although if I am dancing it's even better.
And in the last couple of days, it's had that impact on me more and more. I can't understand why, but it's hitting me harder and faster, and I just can't get enough of it. I've never had more appreciation for a band in my life I don't think. I know it's not as polished as Nightwish, but there seems to be more of a metal side to it which actually works better with this sort of stuff a lot of the time. Fair play to Nightwish with a more Celtic influence in their most recent album, but sometimes it really is guitar solos you want not cello solos - and on Final Destination, where a guitar rhythm becomes a solo and then sigues back into a rhythm for the final chorus and outro WT provide.
Yes, this is relevant.
I don't know how I got the fire back, but it's been in the last couple of days whilst listening to this stuff. And tonight it just happened. It was at table tennis, the uni club I run. It was the last half hour and we were playing Top Table - 4 tables (or as many as we have, but that was it tonight) and everyone plays a game on one of the tables, then you go up if you win, down if you lose, with a top and bottom designated. Very fun, although this wasn't the variant where as soon as one game ends all of them do. I thought it was my being used to Bingo that caused my very rapid play, but soon realised it wasn't. Before I go any further I should say I'd had a successful evening. A training session with Yvonne was a disaster, but once we got into actual games with her, her boyfriend Robbie, and our coach Gordon, I quickly dominated and won everything - an all play all with Robbie and Yvonne resulted in Yvonne beating Robbie and me beating both, and a doubles round robin in which we each played with each other against each other resulted in me winning each of the three games - leaving the others with just a single win each (the one they played with me). Quite confidence boosting, even though I've always been better at doubles than singles anyway (my sole inter-Universities victory was in doubles).
Anyway, playing Bingo style wasn't why I was playing fast. I won my first game (against Robbie, we were on the top table being two of the worst, even though I'm better than Yvonne, but I was hardly complaining, it basically guaranteed me a fairly easy win) but then came up against 3 of the best we have. I predictably lost them all, but rather than the standard humiliations they give me - I was doing well! I didn't lose by any worse than 11-7, and was moving well, hittng some decent shots and actually scoring a high success rate on those chancer shots to nothing I like - the ones I want to be able to do consistently but find it hard to (especially as setting up scenarios for practising them is hard). The highlight came against Joel, a very good player I've never beaten. I fell behing early, but eventually led 10-7, only to succumb 12-10 after he returned what I thought was a won smash. Oh well - very impressive, and it was then that I realised what I was feeling.
Yvonne also noticed it - I'm a decent bit better than her, but as is generally the way at the club tend to dumb my play down a bit to avoid humilation (I'm fairly sure Joel did that with me, but wasn't bothered as much as I somewhat hypocritically usually am). Not tonight. WIthin about 30 seconds I was 9-2 up, as I played as well as I could. I was pegged back a bit, but it was game-5 a few seconds later, and by this point I was so fired up I think I was actually scaring her a little. After that came a typical result against Jasper. Damn Chinese and their pengrip style of play. I always struggle against it, and although the game was pretty typical, I ws fuming as I was expecting more tonight. Still, I annihilated Yvonne again in the final game, condemning her to the bottom table, then it was just friendly banter whilst we cleared up and left.
But I'd lost nothing of the passion. The walk home took place of course to the blistering sound of WT in my ears, and I felt invincible. The walk itself was the release for the self sustaining, self perpetuating emotion. I was there again. If someone had shoved a lectern and a speech under my nose as I walked I would have sigued seamlessly into a fully fledged no prisoners taken debate without question. Christ i've not felt that way since I was 17.
Wait. That's not true. I have felt it since then, in isolated pockets. But the problem is I've not been able to do anything with it, and when that's the case I end up looking like a prat. The smoking ban debate on AltNation is one example, around the time I was insinuating smokers human rights should come second in consideration to those of non-smokers. Bullshit, of course, but I was satiating myself by shouting out such things.
But none of that was on a par with tonight. A full hour it lasted. Yes, I faded a bit, but like I said, the comedown brings a desire for more and I came back in force. I'm even doing it right now. Just as commenting on my last entry made me sad again, writing this, listening as I am to WT, is spurring me on. Of course, I'm tired and it's very very late so nothing will happen (been typing this for the better part of an hour and a half now) but I still remember what it feels like. And I like it.
Ok, big question - why is this happening? Answer - not a bloody clue mate.
Hmm. That last entry was on Sunday afternoon. Later on Sunday something very interesting happened. A random added me to MSN. I asked who it was, and the resulting conversation lasted - get this - 6 hours. Seriously. It seems it was someone from Dundee who is moving to Glasgow in a couple of weeks, but has the problem of not knowing anyone. Fair enough, I had that issue when I moved from Dumfries and it took me a year and a half to solve that one. She's found the forum, and joined, and I've been recommending through personal experience that she's done the right thing and that it is a good way to make friends. She found me through something (don't know what) that I posted - note that that's how Rach found me originally - and, get this, my music taste. Yeah. Apparently, citing the likes of Nightwish, WT and Lost Prophets, it's awesome! She's right of course hehe ;)
The point is that we seemed to get on pretty damn well in that convo. What's interesting is the things we seem to have in common. Music taste I've already mentioned, but there's also things like her social situation - leaving a crap town redeemed only by a few cool people for a good one but where she knows nobody (as I was with Dumfries) - her attitudes to stuff like trust (analogous to me, her best friends are all male, but it would seem incestuous to have a relationship with them) and her sense of humour.
Remembering how much what Rach did for me meant to me when she basically introduced me to everybody after I met her, I'm naturally interested in the opportunity to do likewise for someone else in a similar situation. But what I'm also aware of is that there is a gap in my life for a close friend who has in common with me the sort of things she does. It's always been a bit of a shame really that none of my good friends actually shares my music taste, and just generally a lot of the stuff she was saying about herself could just as easily have been said about me.
I don't want to jump the gun here, or presume too much about someone with whom my entire "relationship" has been a single (admittedly long and indepth) MSN conversation. But I've no reason to suspect this isn't legit, and assuming it is, well, to quote Casablanca, "this could be the start of a beautiful friendship" It could well happen, I mean all my best friends have become close to me more or less instantly, either at the time I met them or very suddenly later on - that applies to both the Bunnies, the Fionas, and Scott. Could lightening strike a 5th time in Glasgow when she moves here in a couple of weeks? Is potentially misguided anticipation of this the reason for my change in mood? Who knows. It may well be contributing.
Ultimately, tonight I have reawakened in myself a fire and a passion for life I thought was beyond resucitation. And I'm not sure I've ever felt better in all my life for it. All I need to do now is find some outlet for this passion. It would be soul-destroying to let it go to waste, that's for damn certain.
I'm away to bed now, but I go filled with, yes, some negativity, about various things, but also high hopes, even if I don't know exactly what for.
Awesomeness.
EDIT: Please ignore the multiple cuts - I was having problems cutting it correctly - there's only one single (but hugely long) entry underneath all that, and it does kinda cover similar stuff (aside from an offtopic bit about Nightwish, which I was going to cut seperately but didn't in the end)