reactions to music

There are certain songs in existence that will make me sob like a little girl almost every time I listen to them. Idioteque by Radiohead, Paris and Rome by the Cranes, Judy and the Dream of Horses by Belle and Sebastian. Ornaments of Gold, by Siouxsie and the Banshees. Just a few of them. I could list them for hours.

And it's not even like I have any kind of real emotional attachment to these songs. They don't remind me of anyone, not even of myself. The lyrics aren't terribly meaningful to me, nor do they evoke certain periods of my life. They're not songs like Camper Van Beethoven's Come on Darkness, which is a song that resonates so strongly with my heart that I decreed it will be one of the three pieces of music played at my funeral, or the Cure's Disintergration, which is a song that could have easily been written by my failed marriage. They're not songs that depress me or anything of the sort.

It took me a long time to figure out why I have such a reaction to certain pieces of music. And the reason is this: beauty.

These songs are so completely and terrifyinglybeautiful to me that the only response I can give is to burst into tears.