On Music, and the Beauty to be Found in Darkness

A ramble about music generas and the value of  exploring dark themes through art:

My taste in music is very diverse, but it's also very particular, so it's nice that I am discovering music I like. I would just as soon listen to a McDonald's jingle as 90% of what they play on the radio.  

This is an example of dream pop, my favorite new genre.

I also appreciate good lyrics - I had to look up these and the line is "this love will kill us". There can be a strange sort of beauty when art explores dark ideas, because when you can relate to them, they open a door to explore and acknowledge dark experiences and traits.  We all have them, and if you never do that, you lose access to parts of you which you need to understand to be whole.

When I entered a dark time in my life, I tried to lift my spirits by listening to careful worship music - and all it did was make me feel worse.  It propped up the idea that everything is good enough. God will always be there to comfort you.  But that was not my experience of reality, no matter how hard I tried to convince myself it was true, I couldn't.

I felt guilty when I began to listen to Nine Inch Nails, but I found comfort in knowing that's I was not alone and that it was possible to turn it into something beautiful.  

Happiness has its own beauty, but darkness is just as real as light, and if you only let yourself think happy thoughts, you may think that's reality, and only things that make you happy can be beautiful.

But how can the ugliness of depression and despair be beautiful? They feel quite ugly and rob you I was being capable of even appreciating beautiful things.  Just as innocent and happy people only experience House of reality, emotional darkness can also mislead you into thinking it is all of reality.  Both can lie to you.

But the value of experiencing darkness is that it forces you to acknowledge shortline use aspects of reality that you would never volunteer to do.  Average human if they had the choice would remain in the garden of Eden and never realize the stranger when they were expelled and forced to battle monsters and dragons.  Doing so bravely allows the light to return, and now your understanding of reality encompasses both darkness and light.

More beautiful than aesthetically pleasing art or experiences is the capacity to understand the Truth of reality objectively, and what I believe is the ultimate understanding of reality is to discover that the love and grace is infinite, even in the darkest and ugliest of times