Life before the internet?!

  If you decide to learn music at age 20something, and drag your punk arse to a music school, you will, inevitably end up in a classroom consisting mainly of 10 year olds (if you are lucky, because there's alsways the 7 years olds' class as well, if you are as incompetent as me). On occasion though, you might get to find a teenager who is not as hyper as the rest, and you might find a secret ally who will help bridge the gap between terrified young adults (yours trully) and hyper-obnoxious young teens who think they are the hottest shit to ever walk the earth (they're not, I guarantee that. I used to be like them too).

  And this is how one nice Saturday evening you find yourself drinking coffee with a 15 year old and sharing your lights on violins, cellos, Nightwish, and why analog is better than digital. And it was somewhere between mp3 capacity and earphone quality that the dreaded question came up: "How the hell did you manage before internet?"

  Now, you will say, I am only 22 years old, so I am quite the world wide web native. Truth is I have been acquainted with the interwebs since the late 90s, when as a little derp my father would load up educational games and comic strips to make sure the 4 year old knew how to spell weird words in english and could tell the difference between RAM and ROM. It was actually fun.

  But other than that, not much. By the time I was 12 the only computer in the house was my father's work laptop, and as for internet connection... I remember the dialing sound all too well. In 2006, 12 year olds would not normally have everyday access to a computer, let alone an internet connection. Only the priviledged kids (read: the school's biggest bitch) would get her own computer, an internet connection, a facebook account, and a stack of Sims games. So what about songs? How did we get the song we wanted? How did we learn the lyrics?!

  Oh the humanity.

  If you wanted a song, you would have to browse radio stations in hopes one of them would play it. If you were one of the lucky kids whose parents would be gone from the house for a long time every day, you might be able to tune in to a music tv-channel and watch all the newest videoclips. Did you want to learn the name of that song? Cross your fingers and pray to any gods that maybe the DJ would mention the name at the end of the song. It almost never happened for that song you wanted.
  And if you never knew the name of the song? Then stretch your ears and move around in circles, hoping to catch a few words in a row among the radio noise so you could start asking around. Then you would take that half finished lyric and go record store hopping: "Hi, I'm looking for that song, i don't really know the name of it, but it's a hard rock band, I think, with a male vocalist, they have a lot of guitar solos? The riff kinda goes like *enter half-arsed humming here*, and uhm, oh right he sings "diamonds in her eyes"and something about a "backseat"?... so you know it....no?" The girl at the big arse multimedia store downtown would look at you with an expression as if she had a stroke. But if you accidentally found a half forgotten second hand record store in a back street, that has been located in the same basement since the early 70s... half way through your mantra the middle aged man who owns the store would shift through the boxes of LPs, maybe walk to the backroom, and then would come back with a record, which he would put on the Technics record player and MSG would fill the room. You found it!!!

  And lyrics? Ah.

  That's another painful story...

  Were you lucky? Was your radio deprived of noise? Then move through radio stations all day long looking for that particular song and trying to learn the lyrics by heart, or write them down. The results were most alwats hilarious. Then you could make copies of the lyrics and sell them to the desperate kids in your school. And that is how 12 year olds acquire smoking funds. But what happens if the song is in a language other than the one you grew up speaking, and your foreign laguage skills are horrible? Tough luck bro. Try to figure it out with the help of a dictionary. What's the word? ''obitchuary''? No? How could it be spelled...
  Or maybe you somehow ended up with an original CD instead of a copy? Or maybe you had an older sibling or cousins who have CDs? All hail the booklet gods, you could read the lyrics in their original, undistorted glory!
  "Why don't you just use your school lab computers to find the lyrics?"
  The whats in the school what? Did they even turn off? Did we even know how to use internet explorer, or google? "My dad has a yahoo! email, yahoo! is better, look it up there" "Which one do I click?" "NOOOO NOT THAT ONE YOU ARE GOING TO GET A VIRUS!!!"

  And if you actually wanted to be able to listen to the song outside radio availability time? Oh boy. Buckle up your belts and get ready cause this one is going to blow the hairs right off your priviledged skull.
  Do you have a cassette radio player? Good. Record that song on a fucking cassette, and hope you get the best sound quality, the DJ doesn't talk, the previous and next song dont play on top of it, and you manage to get the whole of it. Your whole life from now depends on cassettes, much like a caveman. Doesn't matter how cool you are for having this song to listen to anytime you wanted, your classmates would make relentless fun of you for not using CDs. Unless you were lucky and your parents knew someone who could convert cassettes to CD.
  Unable to record off the radio? Then brace yourself and bow your head and beg (literally beg) your older sibling/cousin/schoolamte/friend's sibling/cousin/'s schoolmate to help you get a copy of it. And what are you willing to give in return? How about the Mystic Elf Yu-Gi-Oh! card? Or that really rare pokemon tap... Honestly, you would have cried less if you were to surrender all your birthday pocket money. But it was worth it. Sometimes.
  Then there was also the horrily abusive, lying, spoiled piece of shit brat that you dreaded playdates with and often got violently sick at the mere thought of having to interact with, but her family was really high-tech and never refused to download songs for you, burn them on a CD, and give it to you...only that you needed one playdate to get the songs you wanted, and another one to get the CD given to you, which often included extra tracks scattered throughout the playlist of things she liked and you hated, mainly by horrible one-off female ''singers'' or boybands. Truth be told, this was an excelent plan to get more playdates for their obnoxious daughter who once stuffed a dead mouse down my pants. No wonder I have issues.

  Yup, those were the days.... boy do I wish things were as simple as back then!

What a nice day to be depressed

   There is something curiously soothing about listening to the same finnish folk song over and over and over again, in its most heart-wrenching execution by the most beautiful voice in the world almost crying and accompanied by plain acoustic guitar till you feel your own heart breaking apart (or whatever petrified remains of it still reside in your chest anyway). I could not have asked for anything better on a sunny, pleasantly cool spring day, where whatever grass and weeds grow from between cracks on the pavement and dog turds, and the flowers are in full bloom and you can't catch a breath from sneezing and you have become physically acquainted with every object on your half-block walk from the bus stop indoors as you are too blinded by flower sperm to see anything.

   What I am trying to say is, it is a wonderful spring day, as fine as any one could ask for, and enjoying a walk by the seashore drinking iced coffee and basking in the pleasant sunshine while the cool sea breeze pushes those annoying short strands of hair growing at the edges of your hairline right into your mouth as you try to suck on your coffee straw, and naturally, the mood is sweet and pleasant. So what could I listen to to go with my mood? An uplifting popsong? Or maybe full '80s rock glory? What about that really loud metal song that never fails to make you headbang, even in public?

   Nope. Let's listen to a slow, ballad rendition of a finnish folk song that is an emotional rollercoaster that only goes down, never up, just steeper and steeper down, and ends with the words "never will I forget her until the thorny rose blooms on a corner of my grave". Ah, perfect song to fit the mood.



   So let me get this straight. When you are depressed, heartbroken, suicidal, naturally you want to listen to depressing music. Cause what better to cheer you up than hearing someone with a much better voice than you singing about how meaningless life is and love dies and yaddayadda? Not a rhetorical question, it has an answer, and the answer is in agreement with the fact. There simply isn't anything better for depression that getting more depressed.
But when you are feeling happy, hopeful, content, then your go to music is depressing too? How does that work?

   I am tempted to answer my own question by pointing out that most always, all beautiful songs are sad (and seeking beauty is after all what humans instinctively do), so this is inevitable. Another part of me sheds a bloody tear and whispers that heartache is the most beautiful feeling of all. Excuse me while I go beat some sense into her.

   And then there is the cynic in me (who is the only one who knows what the fuck's going on) who says it is human nature to want to be miserable just so you can whine about it at any given chance.

   Because what enhances social bonds more than crying for no reason? (apparently it is not a valid reason to cry for longing for someone you have never met and in all possibility does not exist. Is it possible to be aching for someone you do not know if they exist or not?) 

The Sky Soldier

   Once upon a time, there was a Sky Soldier.

   He was tall and had dark hair, and his dark eyes could see all the way over the seas. He came from the country of the daybreak, and like all sky soldiers, he was an honorable, brave man, a strong warrior, learned philosopher, and gentleman.

   One day, the young sky soldier was flying over the great blue ocean towards the green lands of the sun. He was marveling at the blueness of the water, so perfect, like the finest silk of his country, when he saw something sparkling-

   Okay, maybe I need to clarify some things before I start my story.

   First of all, the Sky Soldier is not a he. Actually he is a She. And very much aware of it, as the uterus kindly reminds her every month and she fills in forms by clicking on "female" when choosing gender.

   Also, she is not tall at all. More like average. Okay a little bellow average. Fuck off.

   And the eye colour is up for debate. Not really that dark at all. Then again they are not light and bright either.

   Let's not even talk about where she came from.

   Okay the truth is...I am the Sky Soldier.

   Yes. It is true, indeed.

   And I cannot see all the way over the seas, if anything, I am a little short sighted.

   So now you ask, what is a Sky Soldier? Well, my darlings. Take a seat.

   (I suggest you are not under the influences of psychotropic drugs, alcohol, or any other mind-altering substances as I proceed with my explanation, because this rabbit hole has way too many detours and your guide is not reliable at all. Trust me, I know me all my life.)

   So, a Sky Soldier is the lovechild of a too-hot spring night, when allergies ran amok and the booze was plenty, and a mind exhibiting some very interesting after-effects of recreational drug use in days not so long past. To put it plainly, I was bored and my mp3 had ran out of battery and I decided to listen to one of the voices in my head as she whispered to me charming tales of who I could be if I was a story told by Antoine DeSaint-Exupery on acid. This one is the Sky Soldier, a mildly delusional fictional (or not, who's to say?) character that lives life as I do but has a completely different view of that every day shit. Whereas the rocker me only cares about telling people to fuck off and getting a fix of my favourite substance of choice (quadruple iced espresso these days), and the goth me likes to lock herself up inside and read books listening to music even I find disturbing, and the gypsy me argues with the rational me about what sort of disease am I going to catch if I walk around barefoot and then get into bed without showering, the Sky Soldier hovers around, having weird conversations with the Rabbit and the Prince about the meaning of life, why underwear is irrational, and anyway just think of this entry high on caffeine and possibly the neighbor's weed. God I love that neighbor and his habbit of smoking with the windows wide open.

   Each and every one of us has different stories to tell. You don't have to be sharing one delusional brain with many people in order to have different views on the same matter, or multiple hobbies and tastes that do not quite overlap, but rather, cancel each other. You could be a responsible, modestly dressed english tutor, whose trousers and buttoned up shirts serve to cover up permanent art etched on her skin by means of a mechanically driven needle. You could be a punk who can barely have a civil conversation with anyone who likes to embroider pillows whenever the time is available. Or you could be a bookworm who somehow moonlights as a rock musician in seedy pubs in that weird part of town that is always bursting with life and herpes. Or, in my case, you could be all those at the same time, thus earning your qualification as a Sky Soldier.

   I have the shortest attention span and I do not remember what I was going to say next.