5 Songs We Use Not to Talk. Pt. 1.

#1 The Daywalker

Shout Out Louds // Very Loud.

“But I wanna change, change the way we always have

And to make different plans and try not to make this sad…”

As I teetered into my room, cane in one hand, cup of coffee in the other, I turned on the light and just stood there for a moment. Whether if it was due to the medication or just because I naturally stop to dwell, I froze and non-verbally judged my room. There were pants, socks, cards, candy wrappers, record sleeves and just random shit… everywhere. It’s one thing to lose your zen in a place that is your own, but it’s another to lose it when you are forced to move back into your parents’ house. Yeah, this was my old room and I moved back there due to medical reasons.

The last time I lived there was about a year ago when I was in transition from one apartment to another. These transitions happened only a few times because once I was 18 I out like a candle. I never tried to stay longer than I had to either, their place just wasn’t where I wanted to be. Being at my parents was always an internal struggle, so whenever I vacated, I did it in a hurry and always left much behind. Transitions, they’re not my favorite card in the deck that life seems to give me often.

"My room’s a fucking mess…" I thought to myself.
I sighed and decided that something must be done. You ever get that wild hair up your ass, the one that says, "Gosh I should clean?” well I did. And the thing is, I rarely clean my room! It always self-implodes hours later, so I preemptively came up with a strike plan; I had to make another mess before I could start cleaning! My mind needed retrospective destruction, so I opened my closest and began to dig through one of the old boxes that I had left in there years ago.

I didn’t exactly know what I was searching for, but I knew there was something in this box that would satisfy. After digging through old hats, Star Wars posters and “How to Learn Japanese” cassette tapes I found it, my old CD wallet, a.k.a. the bible. Back in its heyday the wallet was bursting at the seams. CDs were double stacked on each-other, crammed into those clear cd slips and album art inserts cushioned the back like a stack of pillows. The variety ranged from the Japanese punk boy-bands like Mongol 500 and the Garlic Boys to deep and classic cuts like Johnny Cash’s vault collection and Live’s “Throwing Cooper”. But then I saw them, The Shout Out Louds. Enter the Daywalker…

When I listened to love songs back in 8th grade I was defined by butt-rock, such as Course of Natures “Supercalla”, America Hi-Fi’s “Flavor of the Week”, and even “Hero” from the Spider-Man soundtrack, written by Chad… Kroeger… (Oh, did I ever get saved). I was your “A-typical” 14 year old, with his mind pockmarked by my female colleague’s newest addition, breasts. And I thought breasts loved butt-rock, so my song with my first girlfriend was “Caught in the Sun” by Course of Nature… She broke up with me the day I got out of the hospital, so perhaps that wasn’t the wisest choice. But all that changed when I started to listen to bands like The Shout Louds, Wolf Parade and Green Day (RIP). My perspective on love songs changed, my relationships lasted longer and breasts became more metaphorical foreplay than attack and defend. Love songs, they don’t have to sound like… complete and utter butt-hurt-bull-shit. 

Derp...

I squatted on the floor and shoved the CD into my record player like it was a parrot and begged it to talkback. It came to life, but before it even had the chance to blink or even play the first song I mashed the next button to my favorite track, track two, “Very Loud”. As soon as the rolling drums hit, that’s when it happened, the sweet beast herself, nostalgia. In a constant hum of musical rubble and re-enhanced oblivion I remembered I wasn’t alone.

The static in the air shrank and I heard my friend Amy stir who had been sitting on my bed the whole time. She had been over to help me organize my room, rearrange it, beautify it, etc, but I was lost. As soon as I stepped into the unintentional need for reconnection I unknowingly brought her along with me. Like the good Dr., Amy had unknowingly stepped into my Tardis and was now experiencing a time shift that she couldn’t see or understand, teenage Me.

I tried to explain to her how I moved up and down the genre ladder like a drunk fireman. How the paradigm shift in music was like moving from dove soup to juicy couture and then back. The change affected my relationships, my driving, smoking, etc… but the fragmented rambling, it felt useless. So I just let the song play, over and over again. As it played I could feel her understand what I was trying to say and little by little my secret world, and she was day walking*, just like me. To use the daywalker is to slip into a world that is outside of our time but yet to still common in the present. We are listening to a jogging dream, a bookmark for a reserved seat in a museum, we are vampirically feeding during our nap time, we are not talking. But, just because we are using this song to “not talk” does not mean we are not communicating, in fact for some it may be the most significant moment of that day, week or month. The transformative language of this type of song will happen in movements, just as it did for me. At first I became lost and unaware of my surroundings. I discovered, relapsed into memory and then followed it to wherever it lead me. I honestly could have had this moment with other songs, and that doesn’t make the Shout Out Louds any less significant, but I had it with them and it was destiny. 

So what’s your daywalker? What song do you use not to talk about the past, but to feel it, experience and share it?

“But I wanna smell, smell the way you do

And to wear those clothes, the clothes your friends do

But I always choose another way

So this is why this love can't stay…”

- Shout Out Louds // Very Loud.