What song/book/film has eh......."connected" with you the most?

WOW.

I had kind of a thing about Mr Messy when I was a kid.

I know what you mean Ronan and I also think that the more critical you are about something (ie music, books, film) the less likely this kind of connection is to - if not occur - at least have a lasting impression. I have a big thing about The Impossible Dream from The Man Of La Mancha because I hold to much of its philosophy. But is that an intellectual argument when we are talking about a gut reaction? Is your response to Lazy primarily, partially or incidentally because of the apposite (as you see it) lyrics?

I get this much more often with books than music or films.

Film: Eureka (Aoyami) Book: Revolutionary Road (Yates) Album: Astral Weeks OR Pink Moon.

Life-changing? Not really. Outlook shifting? Yes, really.

Film: Eureka (Aoyami) Book: Revolutionary Road (Yates) Album: Astral Weeks OR Pink Moon OK, to expand. Eureka: floored me, the stillness, the heat ripples, the negotiation of different paths after a common incident. The stillness, the quiet. It made me realise how much 'inner peace' *splurge* means to me.

Revolutionary Road: the book that I'll write if I ever write a book. So simple on the surface but really asking us, can we handle the truth. The sad fact is that I can't and that I still live by my lies. So you could say that this hasn't changed my life at all but it has in the way that I can see where my lies are; it's the next step in stopping the spiritual mortgaging that's the hard life- changing bit.

Astral Weeks: purely gut, primal, metaphysical reaction. Dark room, spin it => ever heard of astral projection? ;)

Pink Moon: listened to at least twice a week and much the same as what Marcello said about Gillian Welch, the sound of a decelerating sould blah blah. Ties in with Eureka's stillness, and I try to live by it as much as I can.

So maybe not really life changers rather than 'bibles' (carefully used word - you know).

I think it's something to do with the lyrics and the context in which I first heard it and something bigger even.

Er I thought about writing a piece which would have been alot about my life aswell as music. The general line would be that "Lazy" came along at a point (February) where I was beginning to use ecstacy more than before, and to go out more than before, and to lose interest in college and oddly to gain interest in actually writing things.

It seemed to come along when days were getting sunnier, and so the lyrics are quite important yes. Obviously they work with the beats. The two that majorly stick out are the "imagine there's a job....." part. I mean it's so blase, it's almost like it was written for me. Remember that thread back in January where I said I needed a job? I mean, I never got one. What I love about it is that even the "despair" is so lazy, you know? "imagine there's a girlfriend, imagine there's a job, imagine there's an answer, imagine there's a god" and then what seems to be the but who cares part "imagine I'm a devil.....imagine I'm a saint etc". It's all so perfect.

For some reason also the "hard life......hard keeping it all inside, good times, good god" part is amazingly important to me also.

You could also look at this as an epiphany for me re:discovering huge meaning in what is essentially a pop song.

So I hope that explains my position, you might understand my constant desire to mention the song after this. Also it's getting played so much on the radio I'm waiting to tire of it, but it's just not happening. I've not listened to any song as many times as "Lazy", ever.

Is this a rare thing in life in general? I mean, is there a chance this might never happen again? I don't know. How am I talking so profoundly about it all, I'm not sure.

This is a bit embarassing in fact, as someone who likes music so much, it's an odd position to be in. I think you're right, Pete, about it happening less frequently the more interest one has in the medium concerned.

I think what Ronan's describing is lovely and hopeful and non-time limited; I also agree that the standard vocabulary for this feels dead and preposterously hyperbolic, the wrong scale for the experience. Stuff maybe doesn't 'change your life' but rather skews or explodes or temporarily lights up how you might understand your world for a while, and I think of these as little epiphanies, like Ronan sort of does up there. I also remember thinking in my early twenties that as long as these kept happening getting older might be bearable, because it seemed like a more fertile hope than my knowledge/culture just accreting and me just sort of ossifying into it.This was on the back of reading a particular bit of fiction, and I'm not sure it matters much now (for me) what it was (I remember and I'm not telling cos the critical line on literary fiction around here is smarter and scarier often than I'm used to dealing with). And I think it's useful to be able to make a flexible distinction between stuff that you know is good, critically and rationally and aesthetically (and get something out of on that basis), and stuff that makes a more subjective connection, and that both might be important.

I might be gettin this wrong - but how is it changing you? Isn't it that you just identify with it. As I've said on another thread somewhere I think for change there must be some sort of tension. The tension between me and all the things that have 'changed' me was that they were completely different philosophical outlooks. I gravitated towards them. I'm not sure Ronan what I'm trying to say. But I'll post this anyway and you can kill me fer bein patronising. [insert smily face here - denote tone of voice]

OR what Ellie said.

I think how something that connects on the basic level can change you in how they can help crystalize your thoughts on certain issue (thus helping you move on). Examples with me re:The Impossible Dream it made me read Don Quixote - which is both very funny and manages to bang on forever something that The Impossible Dream sums up straight away. Before this point I was very idealistic and frustrated that I couldn't change the world. (Something I've discussed with Ronan before actually). I was personally coming to terms with the idea that being a cynic did not cripple your actions or even preclude you from being an optimist.

With "lazy" it's me realising that procrastination and idle fantasies such as jobs and girlfriends are not such a bad thing, no different to any other idle fantasies people have. I should probably write something, I've loads to say really.

if anyone said to me that something-or-other changed my life, i would probably wonder a bit at them, knowing in myself that there have been times in the past when i have felt that way and its all been me being a tad uncritical. there's been stuff such as *cough* naomi wolf's beauty myth that did change my thinking about gender politics, but since then i have re-evaluated my views many many times. and that was about 4 years ago.

I think "changed my life" is a bit much, I did say that. But where I was dubious as to the actual major effects music or art could have on someone, I now see the light. It may never happen again but I now can understand a huge gut personal reaction to something in a way I couldn't before.

the female eunuch changed my life!! luckily pr0n changed it back!!

Nothing has changed my life in a big way, but I guess thousands of art items have changed it in a small way, inevitably. I've connected with enormous numbers of things. Sometimes I tell myself that I should stop reading books and buying records and wandering round galleries and watching movies and all that if I DON'T think I'll connect with it in a major way.

The last big, obsessive, hours and hours on the web connection was with Japanese inro, little lacquered medicine boxes attached to the belt. Or maybe Joseph Spence's music.

The first song to come along and change my life was "Panic" by the Smiths, and I'm sure I've written lots about THAT experience.

I don't know about the first book - I know a book which did, a lot, was Barthes' A Lover's Discourse, so much so I've never been able to read it right through. I'm sure I've read all of it by now though. It was a combination of the clinical way he sliced up all the various obsessions and indulgences you go through when you fall in love, and the fact that I recognised those obsessions so well, and the fact that the slight difficulty and rigidity of the descriptions screamed volumes to me about why I might never be happy in love, and the fact that behind it all was a vast melancholy and a weary faith in love after everything anyway.

Film - Barton Fink shook up my ideas about creativity and artists and resulted ten years later in me arguing with Momus on a website.

I still can't watch Billy Liar without getting all misty eyed and wistful.

Book: Gravity's Rainbow

I've invoked the "Soon" instance before, but I can't say it changed my life per se -- more it invoked a higher standard that can exist, and the possibility of honest to goodness rapture. And that, perhaps, is enough.

MONEY! CASH! HOES! MONEY-CASH-HOES!

Douglas Hofstadter's _Gödel, Escher, Bach_ opened up a whole big world to my little 13-year-old mind.

As far as critical sensibility out the window: the hardest review I've ever written was of Dog Faced Hermans' _Those Deep Buds_, I think, because I love it SO GODDAMN MUCH I CAN BARELY BREATHE, LET ALONE THINK STRAIGHT.

Film: ET (when I was 8) - I bawled and bawled and bawled, I was completely overcome with tears. I've never had an expereince quite like it.

Book: The Cider House Rules by John Irving left me literally depressed for a week. As I read it while on holiday, this was a real bummer.

Music: The album which, at the time, suddenly clicked and made some amazing connection to me was 'Before Hollywood' by The Go-Betweens. Although when I bought 'Dog On Wheels' by Belle And Sebastian all the people I knew then laughed at it, and I enjoyed that.

Book: Maybe 'Something Happened' by Joseph Heller. Here was someone who had some of the same thoughts I had, only he wasn't afraid to say what they were.

Film: Not so easy. I may as well plump for my favourite film, 'Annie Hall' by Woody Allen. I had never really 'got' Allen's shtick before, but I sat through this practically open-mouthed. All my romantic ideals, but not pathetic or glib or annoying. And FUNNY.

The movie "Being There" changed my life in small, subtle ways that it took me years to recognise. It was the scene with Shirley MacLaine in the bedroom. I was very young when I saw it and had never seen or heard of someone behaving in such a wanton fashion. I was shocked and embarrassed but also enlightened.

Northern Exposure always had an effect on me. It made me want to learn and to explore. Unfortunately because it was on late at night I would have these wonderful ambitions destroyed by sleep and come the morning I would be exactly like I was prior to watching it.

The film would have to be Heathers, in terms of 'it doesn't have to be like this'.

(I would like to point out I never killed anybody I went to school with. Or anybody else for that matter.)