Ophelia

Last time when I was seeing my therapist, Stephen, he asked me what kind of things I like to collect as a hobby. I told him I really liked collecting CDs. My favorite bands, and singers. I started collecting their CDs since I was ten years old, and I have a whole shelf of CDs in my home in Beijing. My mom always wanted to stop me from buying those CDs, but I just couldn't stop. Most of the songs I listened to were from the 90s, so the CDs are pretty hard to collect, especially almost all of them are Japanese. Sometime when it was so expensive to buy from some websites like Amazon.co.jp, I just bought a bunch of cheap ones from individuals. Most of the CDs were actually shipped to China in bulk as trash, so people looked into those boxes and took out the CDs and sold them. The music I listened to is not too popular, so it's not legally imported to mainland China. In the US, however, it was easier to buy those things as second-hand goods.

"But why do you like them? What kind of things in these music that drew you in?" He asked.

"Well, first thing the melody was good. Although they were sort of pop band, their music is not superficial at all. Especially the lyrics. The lyrics really have deeper thoughts on this world, on our lives."

"What's the name of the band?"

"GARNET CROW. The color, garnet. And the bird, crow." The funny thing is I was never sure if I pronounced these two words correctly, since whenever I mentioned the name of the band to native speakers, they always seemed having no idea what I was talking about. Or maybe it was just a weird combination to them.

The perspective presented by the lyrics is so unique. The band member who wrote all the lyrics and also is the keyboard player, Azuki Nana, was described as "expressing the loneliness, the sadness, the unstableness, the ephemerality of life, and the unique view of the world in her lyrics". The darkness of this life. The helplessness behind everything. The black humor. Even the strength of living is backed up by the ultimate sadness. Life is an endless suffering. Everything will be gone. Of course not all her lyrics are this dark, but these elements are what she was famous for.

When I was describing this to Stephen, I was sort of surprised. I did notice these components in her lyrics were dark, but when I collect those adjectives together while recollecting the lyrics, the depth of the darkness shook my body. He said those lyrics must have an impact on me. And there has to be something happened around the time I started listening to these songs.

So I told him those dark days in junior high school. I didn't even realize I was bullied back then.

"That was tough. I wonder how did you survive those horrible days."

"The music. The music and the lyrics rescued me. It supported me. It was my only friend, real friend. That's why last time I was so upset when I told you I was sick of the songs I used to love. It was like I'm betraying an old, trustworthy friend. Like I was betraying a part of me."

I guess that's it. I didn't realize that the lyrics and the music are already embedded in my body. Every nerve, every vein, every drop of blood. Whenever I was unsure about humanities, why people betray each other so easily, how superficial the connection between people, lovers and friends have, how happniess disappeared so quickly, how unfair the world is, why we will never find a place we're meant to be, or why we're actually ending up in the same fate which is the endless sadness and pain in the end, .... those lines of lyrics gave me answer, telling me that, that is the why the world is. And the young, small, helpless me, believed in it. It became a faith in me.

Now I am happy. I'm still listening to these songs, but I'm not sinking in the darkness. I just guess, these music came to my life at the exact time I needed rescue, and ever since then it planted a seed inside me. Sometimes, I don't feel it there, but subconsciously, it's always there.

“The deepest sorrow is the fruit of the greatest happiness.”