Every now and again, a song strikes my heartstrings in a way that indicates it perfectly represents some sort of aspect of my life. I listen to it on repeat, trying to squeeze from it whatever small measure of insight or healing I may glean from it. Right now, that song is Not Tomorrow from the first Silent Hill videogame. Last month it was a couple different songs, but Velveteen from GITS: SAC was one of them. There have been many other songs like this over the years, but I can't think of them off the top of my head right now, because what's really important is how they made me feel at the time.

Not Tomorrow is a song that plays during the nurse Lisa Garland's death scene, where blood starts pouring down from the top of her head. I'm trying to figure out what it is about this song that speaks to me, that so perfectly encapsulates some aspect of my life, and I think it's this: it's a quiet desperation, a soft and tragic horror, when you're faced with something terrible and you want to help but you know you really can't. You just know that you can't get too close or else the problems will swallow you too. And so you save yourself, while being wracked with survivor's guilt, and feeling sorry for the poor thing(s) you could not save. I think that's it. That's how that particular song speaks of my life.

It makes me think about the Lisas Ive had to push away to save myself, the fucked-up situations I found myself in that I couldn't get out of, the way the world is actually a nightmare realm that shifts in ways I can neither control nor predict... the ironic tragedy of existence, of being young and expected to save the entire world from the evil created by past generations. I realize now that in a way, the world is Lisa, and I am Harry... and sometimes, I'm the one who's Lisa, and other people are Harrys.

Soft... quiet... horror. Just like real life.