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Wednesday, 3 August 2011

Your Personal Story

It's your life. You paint it in all the colours and captions and stories that make it meaningful. Your favourite book sits up on the shelf and only you could ever know what it means to you. When you try and explain it, it loses something. And the other person will never feel the same.

Some movies just connect with you. In you. Through you. They feel like home. They are home. You put in the DVD and disappear into another world, yet somehow it feels like a portal to your own world, to who you really are.

We all have that song. You're in your car and it comes on the radio, or filters through a sound system from a building across the street. And you just feel it. You feel the essence of who you are. It's your song.

The art that you live by defies time and distance. Chaplin is long dead, but he can still reach you. Elton John could be at a party in New York, but a song he recorded thirty-five years ago can reach your headphones when you're walking down a rainswept street on the outskirts of Berlin. There are no limits. We don't even need the record, or the DVD; they live in our heads. Our hearts.

We get lost in fashion. Lost in the latest releases. And people look at you like there's a right and a wrong. But whether you're cool or fashionable doesn't matter when you're alone in a dark room at 4am. All that matters is who you are.


You build your personal story. 

Bricks made of pop songs and heartbreaks and road trips and arguments and death and life and fights and cinema visits and folded pages. Every single moment is a moment to dive in. Watch a movie, dream about a girl who played you a song long ago, read your favourite book again and again and again. Each time, you get closer to who you are and where you came from. And if you dive in enough, you find out where you're going. 

8 comments:

  1. Me: Paradise Lost - Book I, Sylvia Plath's poems, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Anna Karinina, Hotel California, Mr. Crowly, and The Sounds of Silence.

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  2. One of my favorite things about you is that you encourage watching the same movies over and over. I do that, and it drives my husband crazy, but usually I'm watching for comfort.

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  3. This is a touching post. I've just had a very frustrating day and halfway through it, my Ipod saved me with a few favorite songs.

    I love the way you give life to concepts and thoughts that I have daily. I also like that Maggie May song you posted about a while back and when I hear it, I think of this site.

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  4. Completely agree and hope to make a better comment tomorrow.

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  5. Love, loved this. So true. :-)

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  6. I was feeling like a nonentity some minutes ago. Now, I feel like a nonentity with a story...a bit like listenning to "Shoplifters of the World Unite and take over" at a sale in a mall.

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  7. TONJA - Fascinating list!

    TB - Absolutely! Films change every time we watch them, as do we, it's essential!

    BRUCE - Thanks so much, your comments always make my day. And I really love that you like Maggie May.

    MARTIN - It's great that you completely agree and that's enough for me :) Any additional comments will be a bonus!

    JAYNE - :D

    AINHOA - You have a story. That's what matters. Keep delving into it!

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  8. This and your post on the song Maggie May are my favourites, both bookmarked for easy access. Your use of words sum it all up so perfectly :)

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