bleak

Sadness is a constructive force. I’m not referring to depression, which is typically long-lasting and corrosive. Healthy sadness breaks the mind and reconstructs it to its original state - pure, unassuming, sensitive, fundamentally broken and honest. Mourning bleeds out the emotional silicone that allows us – encourages us - to feel nothing for, or even to hate, the weak. I am both horrified and ashamed at the new virtue we have found in mocking the depressed. It is fashionable – cool -  to not care whether someone else is lonely or sad. It is humorous to be unsympathetic. We were born to support our tribe, not to hate them; but modern culture ensures that the timid and quick-to-wound will be discarded and the insensitive will triumph. We have lost our trust in, and the beauty of, emotional devastation. A healthy character and a strong soul is fostered only by allowing ourselves to succumb to vulnerability. I am convinced we should allow ourselves to be weak at heart before we can ever be strong.

Now that sermon is done, this is my playlist that I voluntarily go to to mourn – whether for nothing, or for a reason given prior to listening to these songs, it is unimportant. These songs do not relate to the same subject, but the spirit of the songs alone is what matters.

1)      Love Theme – Metal Gear Solid 4

This one deals with war, and boy, does it drive the heaviness of the subject into you. The singer’s voice is beautifully fragmented, not perfect, yet flawlessly so. Her desperate wail evokes the feeling of standing over a war-ravished town, hearing the mourning cries of women who have lost their children and the cries of children who have lost their mothers.

2)      Reset – Okami

Emotionally powerful because of the situation in which it is played. It’s actually meant to provide hope, but the scene is so bittersweet that for me it evokes sadness.

3)      It is Finished – Mother 3

Again, sad because of the situation. I’m supposing if you’ve never played this then it probably means nothing to you. I’m sure by now nobody knows what the hell I’m talking about  anymore. Whatever.

4)      Moon River – Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Every time I listen to this, it makes me think of an old woman, about to die, reminiscing of memories of her husband before she passes away. Of course, that has nothing to do with the subject of the song, but it still weighs my heart down when I hear it.

5)      Running Up that Hill – Placebo

Rings of loneliness and quiet desperation. Don’t know what it is about it, but it’s a downer. I love it.

6)      Mad World – Gary Jules

How could I not. Screams of hopelessness and reveling in one’s own misery.

7)      Morphogenetic Sorrow – Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

Still nobody knows what I’m talking about, but this song plays at such emotionally devastating portions in the game that listening to it is like a mixture of torture from all the sad memories and a sort of joy from the bittersweetness.

8)      The Best is Yet to Come - Metal Gear Solid

How did I get back to Metal Gear so quickly? Regardless, there is something about the beauty of this that makes it a bit sad.