These are some of my thoughts on a few songs on TTATS. Some of them are a bit on the long side so just ignore them if you get fed up with my ramblings.
I felt I wanted to write something about some of the songs that mean most to me on the album. Especially Darkness, that song is extremely personal to me because I can recognise my own past and myself in so much of it. With Unlovable I can also relate to this but in a family way not in a romantic way. I have often felt like I am in the situation which Darren finds himself in Sense of Humour too.
Darkness
Darkness is chapter 1 in Darren?s personal journey of self discovery. This song sets the scene for the whole album and it?s a story of his life he?s been longing to tell. This is where his book of life falls open. It starts by illustrating this cold emotional empty desert in a landscape he?s been wandering alone in for so long. So long, in fact that he can?t remember for how long or when he first felt like this. It?s possible that this feeling even goes as far back to his early childhood. Some memories can be so painful they are permanently blocked from one?s consciousness and maybe they become erased to cope with the unhappy thoughts and memories.
Finally Darren plucks up the courage to admit how he?s really been feeling deep inside because at last he?s realised that in order to heal you have to face up to these feelings and deal with them to move on in your life. It?s pretty confessional and there?s a longing to recapture those elusive, rare, perfect moments of pure happiness that come too rarely in life and are gone in the blink of an eye. He?s desperately longing to hold on to those precious moments but all too often they are snatched away from us. He?s been existing but not really living in this emotional void. He feels as though he?s always waiting for happiness to happen and that nobody realised he was so unhappy and lonely, so he wrapped himself away from the world to protect himself from people and became invisible metaphorically speaking. He was seeing life in a distorted way from a shrouded existence.
There is this on-going theme that no-one connects to him. It is easier to give than receive love. He found it difficult to accept whatever love was offered to him for whatever reason and mistrusts people?s intentions. He now feels the need to take control and to face up to his demons before he can move forward and accept himself for who he truly is. Basically you can?t run away from yourself and your demons for ever - you discover that the monster you were running from is the monster in you.
The music sets the emotional scene and starts like a single ray of light slowly emerging from the darkness. There?s a feeling of travelling, moving onwards through life. The music is ethereal, like a truth, an epiphany suddenly revealed. It?s like an awakening from a dormant emotionless state. He feels like he?s been nowhere emotionally and spiritually and keeps on coming up against psychological barriers in people. Ever wonder why I never really truly connect, although my eyes are open, I could hold your gaze, but I never connected, never connected. He needs people to be open to connect with them to allow their souls to meet and recognise each other. There?s a searching, a longing, a desperation and pleas to be heard and accepted. Maybe he?s been too kind and generous in the past for his own good and therefore taken for granted - they say I am the kindest.
Finally he realises that happiness is a state of grace, not a state of bliss. That we don?t always recognise when we are truly happy. That ecstasy is transitory and that real happiness is acceptance. He has finally learned to accept what love there was in his life. He is choosing happiness rather than relying on other people to make him happy.
I Like the Way
I Like The Way is a sexy song but there is also something deeper in the moral religious connotations of what it means to be sexy. That there?s a price to pay for physical pleasure. That it can?t be consumed in a void without love. There?s an emptiness to the act of love if love itself is absent from it. He is all too aware of the implications of his actions and that it can spiritually deplete you if you simply follow your desires without reference to your conscience first. The dichotomy here is the tension between temptation and the spark of desire but that ultimately temptation wins.
Unlovable
This song starts in a very angry accusatory way. It feels as though there is a fist slamming into your heart. He is made to feel that everything that is sacred to him is negated by rejection. There are feelings of total worthlessness here and all his worst feelings are brought out. All the ugliest feelings we have about ourselves are brought to the surface and a feeling of being exposed from inside out, a rawness, a vulnerability. It feels like the pain of too much tenderness when your love is exposed for someone. It feels like a child, desperately wanting to be loved and accepted. You can feel the rejection intensely by those who should have loved him unconditionally. It?s like holding up a mirror up to yourself and seeing nothing but the imagined ugliness.
It?s like a child waking up crying in the middle of the night, frightened and wanting your mother to comfort and console you and make you feel safe. He feels as though even his own father doesn?t understand him and that even in those most intimate of moments that there is no love in the act of it. There?s that total feeling of emptiness again, feeling ugly and unwanted. He is also aware that he might arise those self same negative feelings in others, so he feels ignored and unwanted by them. This becomes a vicious psychological cycle in his mind of need and rejection and feels that because of this he is not perfect in their eyes - do I remind you of a part of you that you despise?
Sense of Humour
Here we are presented with the image of a totally self contained, self controlled man, apparently in charge and in control of his image, his emotions and his social situation. But that?s all this is. Underneath this facade exists a man in turmoil, at the mercy of his swirling emotions, overwhelmed by a tide of emotions as portrayed by the imagery used here ie waves crashing higher and higher over him. He is consumed by uncontrollable emotions waking in the night feeling terrible anxiety and despair.
He is so bored and tired of social mores and pretending to be something he is not. Inside every ounce of him is longing to be desired by this person. He cannot control himself. He can feel the tears welling up inside of him, the lump in his throat, the pricking of his skin. He feels as though he is looking across a room but that there is a barrier, a glass wall which prevents him from properly connecting with the person he wishes would respond to him in the way he wants them to. I guess it's like being lonely in a crowd, surrounded by people who seem to be talking a totally different language to the one you understand and feeling totally locked and trapped inside yourself. He's desperately trying to find a means to communicate with this person but they are out of his reach. So he imagines the scenario with them instead and plays out conversations in his head.
He wishes he was in a different situation because where he is makes him so unhappy. It is very self-deprecating.
Boy
The lyrics to this are heart wrenching and the things that parents can inflict on their children especially their words can haunt them forever. I know this song has evoked some very uncomfortable memories in me too. These phrases can evoke feelings of not being good enough, worthlessness, self-doubt, uncertainty, confusion, regret, anger, frustration, all those things we feel if we don't feel truly accepted and loved unconditionally by our parents.
