"Orestes" by A Perfect Circle (Song of the Week)

(Again, a MySpace re-post)

Continuing this whole idea of writing about music and life and how they intersect by randomly choosing songs.

Orestes

Metaphor for a missing moment
Pull me into your perfect circle

One womb
One shape
One resolve

Liberate this will
To release us all

Gotta cut away, clear away
Snip away and sever this
Umbilical residue that's
Keeping me from killing you

And from pulling you down with me in here
I can almost hear you scream

Give me
One more medicated peaceful moment
One more medicated peaceful moment

And I don't wanna feel this overwhelming
Hostility
Because I don't wanna feel this overwhelming
Hostility

Gotta cut away Clear away
Snip away and sever this
Umbilical residue
Gotta cut away Clear away
Snip away and sever this
Umbilical residue that's
Keeping me from killing you
Keeping me from killing you


Funny, I turned on my iTunes, hit play, and had a feeling a second before it started that it would go to this song. I don't know if I want to write about it, this song has one of THE most personal, private meanings for me.

So let me start somewhere else. I see numbers and letters as different colors in my mind. It's somethng I've done since I was little, and never consciously. If I think of the word apple, I see red and green (A is red, P is green, and usually the first and most prominent letters in the word define the way I see it). If I think of a number, like 37, I see the same colors in opposite order. It's hard to explain, but it's like, if I set my alarm, it has to be to a number that goes well together. Sometimes the colors are more like vibrations, like it's very hard for me to describe the colors associated with 8s or 9s or 1s, but I feel them. Yes, I know this is strange, and is probably some form of synesthesia. It is what it is.

So, A Perfect Circle. My friend Adam sent me a burned CD in the summer of 2000 with all the APC songs, plus a few Tool songs mixed in there, so the track numbers were off. On this mix CD, Orestes was track 6, and 6 is a pale blue, one of my favorite colors. Whenever this song comes on, even though I know it's really the fifth song on the CD, I get that pale blue feeling. To me it feels soooo 6. So that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling from the beginning.

And Maynard's voice is velvet here. I've never actually read the words before posting them here, so it sorta changes my perception of the lyrics - I had never realized he was saying "umbilical residue" - and gives me lots to ponder. Before, I always thought the song was sorta ominous, with the whole "keeping me from killing you," bit, and the overwhelming hostility, but I also always felt this song was very sensual, what with the "pull me into your perfect circle," and just the way he sings it. There was an element of transformation too, with that whole, "One womb, one change..." I remember once walking home from an acupuncture session, maybe three years ago. I don't remember what happened in the session, maybe it was the time I finally let the acupuncturist put needles in my stomach (the thought still freaks me out), but I remember I felt there had been some profound change, and as I walked home, downhill down a looooooong dirt road, I could hardly keep from bursting into Orestes. It was the only way to take the big feeling I had inside into something intelligible. The whole walk, it was stuck in my head.

More recently, last winter, well let's just say there was a night. I was slightly drunk on cheap wine and slightly drunk on winning rummy, and I sang this song to someone, over and over (at their request, really), staring at the ceiling. I hit every note, or was at least drunk enough to think I did, and sang it from my core, and I felt awesome, like a rock star, like I could really SING. Then we went on and I sang Sleeping Beauty from the same album, a song that I always think of as track 9.

And that was just the beginning of a really incredible evening, I'll leave it at that, and that I will ALWAYS love this song, no matter what happens, because of that evening. Whenever it comes up on my iTunes, it's a good omen. The fact that it came up first today, is awesome. Outside, for the first time in awhile, it's clear and sunny and warm and all the birds are out. Spring is here, and I am happy.