my heart belongs to me.

"i will disappear from this world in 151 days."

there has to be at least one point in your life where you come across something that literally makes you stop. sometimes you hear somebody say something profound, or you walk across a billboard sign with a message so powerful you just had to stop whatever you were doing at the moment just to read it. sometimes you see a piece of art, whether it be a painting, a drawing, a scene from a movie or a theatre production and those few minutes where you're staring into it is just so life-altering you can literally feel the little pieces of your life shift around you as you try to understand just what makes that piece of art so beautiful to you. sometimes you come across a song on the radio, your ipod or the internet and the impact it has on you is so strong you end up listening to it on repeat for the rest of the day. sometimes you're reading a book and the words printed onto the pages fill you with so much emotion you don't know whether to laugh, cry, scream or just stare back in awe.
i went to the ago today with caroline and chris, and being more of a musical person than an artsy person it was harder for me to appreciate the art that chris forced me to stare at for ten minutes at a time. the paintings, sculptures and drawings that i saw today were amazing nonetheless; i can't even dream of replicating something as amazing. it was so easy to see how chris was impassioned about picasso, the group of seven, salvador dali and all the other artists whose work was shown in the various exhibits; whenever he saw a work he recognized from school or something he'd explain full on what it was about and the little technical details about it - obviously i didn't understand a word he was saying, but it was interesting to see how he was so into it. it was easy to hear his love for it in the way he spoke about the various pieces of artwork, and even the way he moved around to look at them - first he'd look at them upclose, and then he'd take a couple steps back to look at it from a different perspective. sometimes he'd hold up his hands to section off a few parts of the painting to look at certain parts more carefully. in the beginning it was a little annoying, mostly because he was talking about something that i had absolutely no knowledge of and every now and then he'd say something about ocad and how his work was so fun in comparison to the work i did in utsc, but then again i can't blame him - he's going to an art school where he gets to do the one thing he loves most - ART! i would've loved to play music all day long, but alas schools will only accept me if i knew how to read music...which i don't. anyway when i got home i was surfing around on youtube when i found this:

and it completely blew my mind. the first time i listened to it i thought it was nothing special 'cause i have the original version of this song, where the main theme just repeats itself over and over again, but then once i got past the minute and a half mark it began to change up a bit, and i was completely blown away. the vibe the song gives off is so heartbreaking - i'm a sucker for strings - and the piano too! it's just one of those things that makes you want to cry in the corner, or walk around in the rain without an umbrella. it's beautifully heartwrenching, and i feel like i can listen to this forever. the recurring theme in the song is sad and hopeful at the same time, as it tells the story of the character the song was created for - roxas. you can sense the despair and the pain he feels when he realizes he wasn't supposed to exist and that he doesn't have a heart, and the hopeful undertones in the recurring theme imply that maybe, just maybe, there will be a happy ending for him. how are you supposed to react when someone tells you that you're not supposed to exist? how are you supposed to feel when you don't even have a heart? are you even capable of feeling? the struggle of discovering a purpose for one's existence and the conflict between wanting to find the truth and preferring to live without it is evident in the contrasting melodies of the song, as it shifts between a despairing tone and a happier one. this has probably got to be one of my favourite classical pieces - i've never been struck by a classical song before, and out of all classical songs this just had to be the one used in one of my favourite video games of all time - kingdom hearts - and it had to be the theme song of my favourite character, roxas.
i guess what i felt when i heard this song was the same feeling chris had when he was in the ago, explaining everything to me and caroline in precise detail and whatnot. to experience something you're so impassioned in, it's an amazing feeling. it fills you up with an emotion so powerful you don't know whether to laugh, cry, or scream, and then your chest feels congested with so much emotion you can feel tears stinging your eyes. one other time i got that feeling was when i watched my first concert: dashboard confessional and city and colour at the molson two or so summers ago. when dashboard came on and sang hands down, oh man...the feeling that rushed through me is indescribable. i just wanted to belt out the lyrics, clap my hands and cry at the same time. it was amazing. like chris and the song i posted a paragraph ago it was so easy to see, or in this case hear the raw emotion emitting from the lyrics and the music, and it was so powerful that it carried onto the audience. that's when you know you've created a masterpiece.
art is such a beautiful thing. i don't understand why there are some people in this world who overlook it. how can you have a world without art?
anyway, if you liked the other promise, another kindgom hearts piece that moved me was:

yoko shimomura is a genius. the way she composes music, it's almost like her songs are sad and happy at the same time.