everything's gone black

you’re looking for that sun

you’re looking for that light

lonely?

you’re not the only one to feel this way

(Our Lady Peace)

Our Lady Peace is one of those bands that you either know for one song (“Superman’s Dead” probably)or you were a huge fan of. I bet you can guess that I was the latter. It sounds like junior year of high school to me. While I love individual songs on other albums more (which is often the case) Spiritual Machines is my favorite album. In one of the absolute only good things to come out of my first serious relationship, an ex-boyfriend special ordered it from Canada for me for Christmas one year, about three months before it came out in the U.S. and I listened to it non-stop. (It also had this really sweet black jewel case.)

It’s a true album, in that it’s both themed and cohesive, but the music also stands alone really well. It has the whole dystopian future thing going on, which is totally not my normal thing, but it fits into this overarching theme of alienation and loneliness and ultimately, salvation, which just all works here. It is not an album for the daytime. It is an album for driving at night. It is album for the dark.

I don’t think that my dark parts are bad. They make me more creative, more alive, more in tune. I just wish that they didn’t make me want to devour everything around me. I just feel like I don’t have time/energy/sanity to feed them constantly anymore. I can’t drive around the same song on repeat for hours or stay up all night reading or go to the beach in the middle of the night to feel the wind.

It’s the worst when the dark makes me feel alone lonely. Like I’m alone with my song and my darkness and no one else is listening, no one else feels it. Sometimes I hear something and it hits me that the only people that got it are gone  might not care anymore. And it would break me, if I couldn’t dance at other people’s weddings to “In My Life” with my husband or if Jimmy didn’t play “Kids” in the car for me because it’s our song. I need other people much too much.

Sometimes, even if it’s not true, I feel like everyone leaves.

But, always always always beneath everything and everyone else, the music, it’s constant.

This album is really good for that. For feeling lonely, but not alone.

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