YOU ARE HERE: zharth.net / Zharth's Music Log / Week 117 (Self-Portrait)
(Originally finalized on January 6, 2025)
Preface: In my teenage years, I used to keep a running list of songs that I identified with and related to - as I imagine a lot of young people probably do - which I labeled the soundtrack to my life. In retrospect, it's really more the soundtrack to my youth. Not all of those songs are still relevant to me today; and anyway, I've already "spent" a lot of them on this music log scattered across various themes. But I thought it would be fun to spend a week looking back on some of those selections, and consider what they once meant to me - or maybe still do.
Monday: Styx - Man In The Wilderness [The Grand Illusion, 1977]
Comments: There was a time in my life when I would listen to this song every year on my birthday. "Another year has passed me by. Still, I look at myself and cry." Despite growing up in a stable home with loving parents, in a family that, while I have never described us as rich, we certainly had the means to afford all the necessities and more than a few luxuries... Despite all this, I say, I've never led a normal or carefree life, mostly on account of my own anxious temperament - a fate on which I can only blame God. But that's why I identify with the soldier sent away to die, or the sailor drifting with the tide, never quite knowing why. "Sometimes, it makes no sense at all."
Tuesday: Pink Floyd - Hey You [The Wall, 1979]
Comments: To say that I identified with Pink Floyd's magnum opus rock opera The Wall as a tortured adolescent would be so cliche as to be boring. But it really is true. That just goes to show how well Pink Floyd captured the essence of that time in one's life. And few moments are so lucidly prescient as the time I was driving to the mall on a rainy weeknight after dinner, and this song came on the radio, and it occurred to me that it was the perfect encapsulation of my high school experience. It took me a long time to admit to myself that I had a problem - let alone say it out loud to someone else - but all my life I've been crying out for help. The cries have just been muffled by the wall I've built around myself. "The wall was too high, as you can see. No matter how he tried, he could not break free."
Wednesday: Neil Young - The Loner [Neil Young, 1969]
Comments: There's no getting around the fact that I'm a loner. I don't take any kind of perverse pride in that identity, it's just the unfortunate truth. Although people with the sort of social handicaps I suffer from can come off as "aloof" or disinterested, it's not that I don't care - it's just that my doubts and insecurities are stronger than any instinct for conversation I might have. I wish it weren't true, but most of the time it's not worth the hassle for me, or the discomfort for someone else, because I'm not easy company. You could call me self-absorbed, but I have to keep myself occupied somehow during those long hours spent by myself. "Know when you see him, nothing can free him. Step aside, open wide. It's the loner."
Thursday: Lynyrd Skynyrd - Don't Ask Me No Questions [Second Helping, 1974]
Comments: I want to say that this is a song I identify with less than I used to. I definitely remember it being part of the soundtrack to my life, but I'm trying to remember exactly in what context. I know I don't enjoy social confrontation, and when I'm posed a direct question, my mind sometimes has a tendency to go blank. The more open-ended the question is (like, "what have you been up to lately?"), the worse it is. I know I probably have a good answer, I just can't think of it in that moment. But it's something I'm working on. I like it when people ask me questions now, because it shows they're interested, and it gives me an opportunity to share something I probably would have kept to myself. I just don't assume - like some people do, who never seem to run out of things to say - that somebody else is going to be interested in whatever's occupying my mind at any given time. "I appreciate your feelings, and I don't want to pass you by. But I don't ask you about your business. Don't ask me about mine."
Friday: Black Sabbath - Megalomania [Sabotage, 1975]
Comments: I know it doesn't look good for me, putting this song on a list I've described as a "self-portrait". But although I do occasionally have delusions of grandeur - I mean, my head is grounded in reality, I just like to entertain ambitious fantasies - I've put it on here mainly for the line, "why doesn't everybody leave me alone?" In the context of the song, it could be interpreted as the desperate cry of a schizophrenic. But as somebody who suffers from social anxiety, it's how I tend to feel when people are lighting up my phone, or knocking on my door, and I just want to stay in my solipsistic dream world without the anxiety of dealing with other people. Which is not to say that I don't like spending time with family and friends - I need companionship, too. It just drains my battery fast.
Saturday: The Who - Boris The Spider [A Quick One, 1966]
Comments: I don't want to dwell on this song too much, because it's an unpleasant subject for me, but sadly, I do suffer from arachnophobia enough to warrant including this humorous song about the horrific experience of battling a common house spider on the soundtrack to my life. I'm a little bit better at handling it than I used to be when I was younger, and I can usually look the other way if I'm out hiking, and I'm in their territory. I just expect them to know their place and keep their distance. Because if they don't, I will show no mercy. "Where's he gone now? I can't see. Maybe he's as scared as me."
Sunday: Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - The Last DJ [The Last DJ, 2002]
Comments: I couldn't think of a more appropriate song to end this theme on, than the title track to Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers' concept album about musical integrity. Reflecting my own feelings on the soulless machine of corporate radio, I've taken this song as my programming compass. Not just on this music log - I even used it at one point in time as my signature outro, while spinning tunes over the air on campus when I was a college radio DJ. "There goes your freedom of choice. There goes the last human voice."