Things Don't Go Back to the Way They Were

It's definitely one of the hardest lessons, one I never seem to quite grasp fully, and it's been on my mind lately, as there have been a lot of changes at work in the last few weeks.

But today it home even harder. I was sitting at my computer, working on a scholarship essay, fiddling with iTunes and the new "genius" part of it (which for whatever reason, could make me playlists yesterday but can't today), and I clicked on an old favorite song by Chris Cornell. Then on this sidebar thing, it listed all these similar songs (of course in hopes I'd buy them), and I realized that he has some new music out.

I listened to it, barely. Wow, was it ever terrible. I mean just beyond my worst expectations (which were pretty low after Carry On). If I'd ever heard that crap on the radio, I would've changed the station in a second. I got all the way through one song (Long Gone), or should I say, it was the first one I played so I forced myself to sit through it. It was a very, very long five and a half minutes.

It's just incomprehensible to me. It was bad enough with Carry On (and the last two Audioslave albums, and to some extent, the first). I just couldn't reconcile that sort of fluffy, insubstantial music with no depth or soul with the Chris Cornell in the days of Soundgarden, Temple of the Dog and Euphoria Morning. Hearing this newest incarnation of the man is just too much. I felt sick to my stomach.

Chris Cornell, probably more than any other musical artist (except maybe Maynard and Tori), has touched my life with his music. It's hard to put it in words that don't come off as tired cliches, but Chris' music reached me at a difficult time and accompanied me through so many years. I owe a lot of my most treasured friendships to that man - because of an online forum I started going to in early 2000, based on talking about his music. There was so much raw emotion in his words, so much fucking poetry in the way that man wrote lyrics. His songs were so rich and meaningful and unique and gorgeous and deep.

Some of my very favorite snippets as examples:
"You say that midnight opens its arms to me"
from "When I'm Down," Euphoria Morning