solitary_summer | Entries tagged with nin

I really shouldn't be procrastinating on YouTube at almost 2 am. *sigh*

I'm so out of it I don't even know anymore who these guys are, but The Fragile will always have a special place in my heart, and this song is still lovely.

Now With Teeth was when I started to fall out of love with NIN, but this is an amazing song.

Current Mood: nostalgic

# To no one's particular surprise G. dropped by at work today. Said he wanted to say hello, so that I wouldn't think he was disgruntled. Newsflash, dear G. -- I could. Not. Care. Less. I don't carry grudges for weeks, so I was mostly just puzzled/vaguely amused and I let him ramble on about his lecture (and put it down to petty jealousy, but I still can't believe that he's actually giving university lectures, but if he really cut down his drinking because of it, it at least it serves some purpose...), but he really does live in a world of his own. ::headdesk::

# And speaking of heads, desks and the meeting thereof -- note to self, if you must use livejournal for your ongoing, draftish fanficish scribblings instead of TextEdit, lock it.

# I'm kind of stuck with my They Keep Killing Suzie review. ::scratches head:: ::feels stupid::

# I'm not saying the endless waits between NIN releases were fun, but at least the results were worth the wait; I'm not so sure TR is doing himself a favour with this inflationary output of semi-finished, half-assed stuff. Or have I and my taste in music changed so much? YZ felt like something finished, thought-through, with a will and concept behind it; The Slip has the same thrown-together, neither-here-nor-there feeling as WT for me and doesn't even particularly make me want to try to get into it.

#

I must admit that while I squeed about NIN's Ghosts at the time I just kind of let it sit on my HD since, because after a first cursory listen all those instrumental tracks that didn't even have titles to tell them apart seemed a bit hard to get into, but today I noticed the pictures that shows up on iTunes for each song, which made me take a closer look at the artwork that came with the download, and some of the photographs are truly stunning. I've finally replaced my Trochwood wallpaper with this picture, which to be perfectly honest I'd have preferred without the nin logo, but is still lovely and relaxing to look at...

When fandoms cross over, pt.2. NIN's A Warm Place playing after Andrew Lloyd Webber voted out that one guy in the second Any Dream Will Do episode. And here I was, always feeling weird with my taste in music all over the place.

And [::facepalm::], yes, apparently JB will make me watch reality tv at least with one or half an eye, when I steadfastly avoid Starmania, DSDS, Dancing Stars & whatever they're called over here.

Up early for jogging & only have to be at work at noon, hence strange & random morning updates.

Dear Trent,

With Teeth is forgiven.

Renewed love, me.

I was so, so wary after the disappointment of WT, the new image that came with it, the new-found political angle (*), the whole marketing concept, but this is actually good, as far as I can judge, which admittedly is not very. In any case, I like it a lot, as in, able to play twice over without getting bored or tempted to skip. Trent will probably never be a very good lyricist, there are analogies, images and phrases that are definitely over-used, and the rest isn't exactly high literature either, but like with TF the music is so interesting that it's easy to simply not notice the lyrics' weakness. My fangirl days are & remain over, but I'm a lot less embarrassed about them now.

It's an album again, rather than random tracks stuck together on a cd. If I had to pick a favourite track at this point, it'd be Another Version Of The Truth, which is amazing. He really should do more instrumental tracks.

(*) Not that I'm not all in favour of anyone finding a political/social conscience, god knows I wish I were less apathetic, but I'm wary of Art With A Mission And Capital M Message on principle, because it rarely makes for good art, and The Hand That Feeds didn't exactly convince me TR'd be able to pull it off; what's more, in his case it seemed so... jumping on the bandwagon, and somewhat belatedly at that, and definitely a case of preaching to the converted.

Current Music: nin, in this twilight

Got up at 4:45. On a Sunday. After I'd got up at 5:45 for a morning run before work yesterday. I am clearly insane.

Biked to Schönbrunn and took about a million photos in the morning sunlight, mainly to start exploring the different functions of the camera, which I'm really happy with, apart from the lens/distortion problem. (But I need a zoom lens; I don't think I could use a fixed focal length lens for what I do; if nothing else, I'd end up run over by a car sooner rather than later.)

Had a second breakfast and will probably be very, very lazy for the rest of the day, with a bit of cleaning up and belly dancing practice.

Very boring board-game evening with Ch. and T. yesterday that I hadn't the presence of mind to get out of when invited; not an intelligent or even remotely interesting conversation in sight, and I now really want to see Labyrinth again, after having played that idiotic labyrinth game three times, and please stop me when I gush too extensively about how my niece is cute and smart and generally the bestest baby ever, because yesterday I realised that if there's something more annoying than parents going into endless raptures about the wonderfulness of their offspring (who at least is their child), it's aunts going on and on and on about their nephews and niece in a boring and slightly pathetic way.

Hm, and Year Zero? Picked it up Friday, because old habits die hard; I can't say much yet, it's a lot less catchy than WT (and not instant love like TF), but after having listened to it twice I'm definitely a lot more intrigued than I was then. Still not so sure it's my cup of tea, but it got me interested in the direction that NIN is heading again.

Current Music: The Sum of Us on YouTube

I'm confused? Conflicted? How could I have forgotten that Still was so very awesome?

And what kind of sound system does the latest iMac generation have? Because either my memory is faulty, or years of absence really make the heart grow fonder, or this sounds a lot better than on anything I've played it on before? I never payed any attention to the technobabble about the different versions nin albums are mixed in, because while I may like my technical toys to some extent, a new sound system for a nin cd always seemed too ridiculous to even remotely consider, but damn, i think I might have been missing out.

Still thinking about this ideal image of myself; or more precisely, avoiding to, because the list of things I'd like to change, like to be, is so ridiculously and dishearteningly long...

Also, new layout; less personal, but calm, simply, green and spring-y.

ETA: When fandoms collide: ~~Captain Jack, Giles and Wesley~~, er, John Barrowman, Anthony Stewart Head and Alexis Denisof. *g*

ETA2: I know less than nothing about CSS [insert fond nostalgic memory about the old S1 system where I was actually able to modify my layout to a limited extent], but I can still google and follow instuctions; and voila, annoying underlines removed from links...

Current Music: nin, leaving hope

Confessions of an ex-fangirl would be an appropriate title, I think...

Or, reflections, not to get anyone's expectations up.

It's not that I haven't loved the music, but in hindsight I guess my involvement with nin was always primarily emotional, and yesterday I felt... not even out of place, at least not uncomfortably so, rather in a fond & distanced way, if that makes any sense?, but so absolutely emotionally detached that it's impossible for me to say if it was good, bad or anything in between. It took me about half the show to get even a little bit into the mood; for a long while I was just mostly standing there wondering how - seven years? how can it have been seven years already [insert platitude about the swift passage of time] - ago I listened to this, decided (not immediately, but soon after) it defined the state of me and fell in deep fanish love for the next few years?

Strange.

I'll still listen to TF on occasions and have recently discovered a certain fondness for tracks 10.-13. of WT, but nin isn't what I want from music emotionally at this point; the limitation to the anger/depression spectrum doesn't interest me any more. And while other people seem to be perfectly capable of doing that, I find it almost impossible to divide artistic appreciation from emotional connection in this case.

( not really a review )

Current Music: Aynur, Keçe Kurdan

So, is Torchwood 4 going to turn up again somewhere down the line like Babylon 4? :D

And what was I thinking when I decided to buy the ticket for the NIN concert? I feel old and grumpy (but grumpy in an entirely too mellow sort of way) and absolutely not in the mood. Not to mention that I'd counted on at least getting some new material when I bought the ticket, on the mistaken assumption that that'd be kinda the point of touring, and I'm not too keen on hearing all the TDS and PHM stuff again.

OTOH, there's something to be said about not having expectations; I might end up enjoying it, after all.

Current Music: Bendik Hofset, Anne-Lise Berntsen, Pro Logo

Why did I just order a ticket for the NIN show in March when I haven't even listened to a CD in months, not to say years? A year? And never did anything but whine & bitch about WT to begin with? The off chance of new material that might suck slightly less? Nostalgia? 1 am temporal insanity? TR's beard?

::sigh::

Damn expensive nostalgia, too.

Then again, if I didn't want to go after all, and if were such an evil, mercenary person, I probably, strictly theoretically of course, wouldn't have any problems re-selling the ticket with some kind of profit even. Which of course I wouldn't do, but I guess I wouldn't be stuck with it either, so... eh.

Time to go to bed, I think, before I do anything else stupid to be regretted in the morning.

Random pettinesses I don't really want to post anyway. ~~Aliens made me do it!~~

- I never voted for either of the parties currently in government here, and on any normal day would like to see them gone sooner rather than later, but what with the over-our-dead-bodies noises the ÖVP (for the non-Austrians: conservatives with equally conservative religious tendencies) has been making recently, it would deeply satisfy me to see them in power just long enough to be forced - kicking, screaming, foaming at the mouth and predicting den Untergang des Abendlandes -, either by the European Court of Justice, or our own Verwaltungsgerichtshof, to legalise gay marriage.

- Confessions of an ex-nin fan. I'm very glad I went through my nin phase in the Fragile period. I can't (could. don't want to.) begin to describe how off-putting I find this fanclub thing, and frankly, I preferred it when Trent was more elusive, but at least democratically so. Undoubtedly nin.com:access sucked, but it sucked for everyone equally, excepting perhaps the two dozen regulars who'd turned it into their living room and had fun terrorising unsuspecting newbies. Still, I suspect my dislike isn't entirely rational, and I probably would be less hard on the whole venture if I could like With Teeth a little more. I don't; I felt obliged to, tried and failed. It isn't just growing out of/away from this kind of music - I recently listened to The Fragile again, and I still love every moment and wouldn't see anything changed. I can't quite put my finger on it; the closest I've come to pinpointing my aversion is that from TF I'm getting a sense of urgency, that this, all of it, needed to be made, and for this reason I'm - not forgiving, but not even noticing those moments people tend to complain about on boards, the songs they dislike, occasionally clumsy lyrics and what not. Starfuckers is just as much a part of it as The Great Below. From WT I'm getting... nothing like that. Weariness, rehashed lyrics, evoking an anger and depression that isn't there any longer, or that he's very tired of; a sense of being stuck between places, neither having entirely departed from the nin past, not yet arrived anywhere. The only part I still like, or actually can listen to, is the Sunspots to Right Where It Belongs block, and I keep wondering if it's because it's close to TF.

I never wanted to be one of those fans who forever whine about how much better things were before, and it's not repetition I want, either, and I'm the last person to wish continued depression on anyone. Rather, WT makes me wish for a cleaner, more definite cut. Saying this is probably tantamount to heresy, pun not intended, but listening to WT makes me wish Trent had taken time to work through his issues, and then taken yet some more time to make and think through the new album, instead of going all Bleedthrough, no, wait, With Teeth.

Also, haiku.

Current Music: mozart, don giovanni

I wish I knew more about music, perhaps then I could actually articulate what bugs me about WT, but still makes me love TF; whether it's something objective or merely personal associations.

In other, very irrelevant news, I rather belatedly figured out how to access the hidden menu on the AATCHB DVD (when I finally had a DVD player, and the DVD, I just didn't care enough any longer, and gave up after a few unsuccessful attempts...), because someone mentioned with some versions you have to hit 6 instead of 7, and, voila. Not that it makes much of a difference though, because I also realised I couldn't/didn't want to watch it any longer, knowing what was really going down then... one could argue that this shouldn't be an issue, because Trent chose to release it, and after all nin has always been about pain and depression and whatnot, but sitting on the couch & watching from a clinical distance feels somehow voyeuristic, and just a little wrong...

That, or I'm getting weirder in my old age.

[ETA: first

dailygarfield, now

calnhobbes... ::sigh::]

Current Music: nin, the big come down

Dear Trent,

Stop fucking with my head.

No love, me

Notepad documents full of thoughts about what I didn't like about With Teeth, rant & review half-composed in my head, and then I put the CD in the computer, put on the headphones, and suddenly there's a kind of... click, so to speak. I don't even think it has actually been growing on me as such. The last third from Sunspots to Right Where It Belongs definitely has grown, but the rest... not really. Oh, and I still pretty much hate You Know What You Are?.

It's not so much about discovering new layers, rather it seems to be a matter of approach, of listening to it in an entirely different way than I listened - learned to listen - to The Fragile. Forget about careful analyses (as far as a fundamentally unmusical person like me can listen to music in an analytic fashion), and picking things apart, don't think too much, just let yourself be swept along. The irony of course is that it was nin that made me listen carefully and consciously to music in the first place.

It still isn't deep love, for the greater part, but it's enjoyable enough, in a normal, hey, nice CD, way.

[And really, I'm not even so sure it wasn't a spur of the moment mood thing, that it will even work again the next time.]

The impression wears off a little around Getting Smaller, but the rest of the CD I already did love, kind of, in a different fashion. The weird thing is, this part of the CD seems to demand a different, more attentive listening mode again. There's a definite break between Getting Smaller and Sunspots that makes the transition rather difficult for me... Last time I found the first part uninteresting, but loved the second, this time it was the other way round, compelling beginning, failing to connect to the end.

Does this even make the slightest bit of sense?

Right Where It Belongs... [::sigh::] the song that makes me feel slightly guilty for being a nin fan, something of a voyeur, using another person's pain to work through my own issues; almost self-conscious about the two times I was standing there in the crowd, screaming. Right Where It Belongs is the song that, my love for the music notwithstanding, makes me wish Trent would find it within himself to draw a clear line, start gardening, or painting, or composing an opera score - anything, except spend months on tour, revisiting songs that are the result of more than a decade of battling with depression; raising the very demons he's trying to banish. Especially given what's transpired recently, that would seem a little too much like tempting fate to me...

Current Mood: confused
Current Music: NIN, With Teeth

This is a weird thing to experience; when I fell out of love (and into vague nostalgic fondness) with Bowie it was a slower, gradual process. Now NIN... I still love The Fragile, it means a lot to me, musically, emotionally, in a way no other CD ever did. There's a period of my life reflected in the music. But With Teeth leaves me cold in almost every respect. Perhaps I need to readjust, let go of expectations I never knew I had? I've listened to it four times now, and maybe I would (will?) change my mind if I listen(ed) to it another 96 or so times, but the problem is, I don't particularly want to.

All The Love In The World: Unexpected, but I like it.
You Know What You Are: Dislike, suppress the urge to skip. Skip anyway. Sounds like a reject from a Marilyn Manson CD. Ah yes. now I know what it vaguely reminds me of. I never much liked The Perfect Drug, either.
The Collector: Interesting. Like it. Although, um, Memorabilia?
The Hand That Feeds: Blah. Very blah.
Love Is Not Enough Eh. Sounds like an outtake from TF, sort of. Lyric-wise, too.
Every Day Is Exactly The Same: Like, more or less, but not particularly intrigued either. Too chorus-based for my taste.
With Teeth: Now this one's interesting, at least musically. I'm guessing, though, it's the same drug metaphor already used in Sanctified and (perhaps, personal theory) Reptile?
Only: Very strange. Very un-nin. Interesting.
Getting Smaller: What does this remind me of? Not bad, though.
Sunspots: Interesting. Don't much like the chorus. But interesting.
The Line Begins to Blur: Okay-ish.
Beside You In Time: Um. Probably should be interesting, but doesn't interest me. Vaguely irritating.
Right Where It Belongs: My favourite, perhaps. Or at least the only one I can even remotely connect with, that stirs some kind of feeling. Vaguely APC-ish, though.
Home: To repeat myself, eh.

There's this near-constant sense of being reminded of something, without being able to pinpoint what exactly it is, which is rather irritating. Bowie, but probably not? Or am I hallucinating?

I do find it interesting musically, if not overwhelmingly so, but it's a very abstract appreciation. I don't really connect to this album at all, emotionally or otherwise. Since I've always found the type of fan that constantly whines about how it wasn't better before, extremely annoying, this is me, not whining, merely being extremely baffled. I don't know what to do with this CD. At all.

ETA: Also, a booklet with the lyrics would have been much appreciated, because scrolling back & forth & up & down & back again for good measure through a 1828 x 2438 pdf picture in an attempt to find lyrics? ~~Really fucking annyoing.~~ Not so much fun. And whatever happened to the Gesamtkunstwerk a CD was supposed to be? / me, whining.

Current Mood: confused
Current Music: nin, with teeth

After a week, finally enough will-power & a sufficient state of awakeness again for a morning run. Go me. /sarcasm. Amazingly beautiful though, the whole park, the air, suffused with scents of all kinds of flowers and blossoms and growing things, coming alive in the warmth of the morning; lilac, but also a lot of other scents I couldn't distinguish, almost overwhelming, stepping from the street into the park.

As a result I wasn't merely tired at work, but fall-asleep-on-my-feet tired.

Not quite the desired effect.

First impression, With Teeth is... strange. Unexpected somehow. Not sure yet whether I like it or not... I keep fighting this weird urge to eject the CD and return to the comfortable familiartiy of the soundscapes of TF.

Current Mood: confused
Current Music: nin, the collector

I don't know what's the cause, but I haven't been feeling like writing recently... Words feel out of place, sentences come out odd, and nothing seems actually important enough to bother writing about.

# Work is... ah well. The week before the last one I went through one of those spells where it felt absolutely intolerable to trapped in the shop for eight hours, minutes dragging by with infinite slowness, hating every customer just for being there, that kind of thing. Last week was better, if boring. Buy more books, people. I need that job.

# Bonsai woes. I really should have known better than to buy one. The necessity of trimming goes against all my instincts, my philosophy even, which tend to go along the lines of letting things develop the way they want to. The way they do. If a plant grows, wonderful; let it. [Also, go me!, I haven't managed to kill it yet.] This is I, who at seventeen had a heated discussion with her best friend about French baroque garden architecture vs. English parks; words like rape and violation might have been used. I've resigned myself to baroque gardens in the meantime, can even appreciate their beauty, but the romanticism of vegetation running wild still has a special appeal. I hate the idea that I'll have to practically make a philosophy out of trimming that poor tree into a shape I chose for it. Cut off two new shoots yesterday, but it made me feel like an evil tree killer.

It's actually crossed my mind to give it to my sister and her boyfriend, but since they seem to keep actually killing bonsais, probably not such a good idea.

# Picked up my morning runs again in earnest; three times last week, three times the week before that. None today since it was raining.

# What else... cake for K. last week, Schwarzwälderkirschtorte, belated birthday. My sister was over for breakfast Saturday before last; Gugelhupf.

# Strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, considering the six years that have passed since The Fragile came out, and my personal development during this time, I'm rather unenthusiastic about new NIN... Watched the video once, but wasn't particularly thrilled. I'll buy the new CD of course and maybe pick up the TDS remix while I'm at it; I still love TF, have been listening to it again recently, because somehow by now I seem to be able to appreciate the music while maintaining a certain emotional distance, where I no longer feel in danger of being dragged or tempted into that kind of emotional state again. The love is still there, but the fangirl days definitely seem to be over...

And is it just me, or is the artwork not particularly... er, thrilling either?

Current Mood: uninspired

Listening to The Fragile after... quite a long time. I haven't had a NIN cd in my player for months, and even now it's curiosity, a way of testing my reaction, rather than any real desire for the music.

There's a certain detachment. Nostalgia, and it's not as if I suddenly have started to dislike the music, but I am no longer the person who could so deeply, wholly identify, and NIN is too emotional to be something I can appreciate only on an abstract aesthetic level; this kind of music (for me at least) doesn't allow for detachment, and I suspect it will always been closely connected to a phase in my life, a level of experience.

Change is a strange thing; to observe part of yourself left behind in the past, experiences losing their cutting edge, their subjective perspective, to be regarded from a objective distance, with an indulgent smile, or a puzzled frown.

And maybe it's a certain reluctance, even fear of... slipping back? that makes me almost unwilling to listen to the Downward Spiral now.

'If I no longer love Diana,' he wrote, 'what shall I do?'

The funny thing (and part of the reason for originally quoting it) is, that a long time ago I remember asking myself the same thing, though with nothing like Stephen's desperate urgency... when I started falling out of fangirlish love with Bowie. The sense, and yes, slight anxiety, of suddenly losing something that has taken up a large part of your emotions, and not being quite sure what to replace it with.

This isn't a question that bothers me any longer; if nothing else, I've learned that live changes, people change, I change, and when it's time you'll be ready to let go of things, and others will move in their places.

Still, there's a kind of faint melancholy...

[I'm blaming the cold flat and resulting pleasant alcoholic haze of a cup of Glühwein if this post should have turned out more pathetic than usual...]

Current Mood: melancholy
Current Music: nin, fragile, left

Something of a gratuitous nin fan-girl post, but I'm tired and should really be asleep already considering I've got to get up at 6 am tomorrow [today, by now], but there's still an inch or so left in my wine glass & I can't quite make up my mind to get up, turn off the computer & brush my teeth...

Anyway... my nin-obsession has faded somewhat recently, and PHM has never been in my CD player with the frequency of TDS or TF, but sometimes I'm just in the mood for at least a couple of songs. And while there's the temptation to wax ironic about all the nin cliches, partly out of personal embarrassment about my belated wannabe goth phase, partly, I guess, because the depression part was all too real, and ironic distance seems an easier way of dealing...

:: blinks at screen :: That takes longer than I intended & I'm kinda losing track of my sentences here... What I actually wanted to say was that some of the lines of 'Down In it' still strike me as an incredible poignant description of depression. Blunt and maybe not overly artistic as lyrics go, but very much to the point.

i used to be so big and strong
i used to know my right from wrong
i used to never be afraid
i used to be somebody
i used to have something inside
now just this hole that's open wide
i used to want it all
i used to be somebody

(...)

what i used to think was me is just a fading memory

On a related note, will there be a new nin cd before my 35th birthday? ::wonders :: 32nd would be nice, too, but I'm being realistic here... :: snark ::

Wine gone, teeth brushed. Post still not making very much sense. Just... go to bed, woman. like, now. You'll regret it when the alarm goes off in barely 5 hours...

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