This is going to be a 3 part series in which I discuss the song Halah by Mazzy Star and the life I've lived around it. I was initially just going to write about the song in the Music category, but for me there is no way to properly convey my thoughts on it without explanation of my experiences with it and why I think about it the way I do.
- The Song -
Halah by Mazzy Star is a favourite of mine. Like most of Mazzy Star's music, it's tinged with doom and gloom, but Halah isn't as darkly miserable as some of their other songs. Despite the theme of yearning and regret, the actual sound is fairly light and beautiful - it always makes me think of Wisteria and late-afternoon sun. Hope Sandoval's voice is dreamy and floaty while also being incredibly pensive and intentional. Halah is a song about a troubled transition between relationships, told by someone maintaining a facade of having moved on and found love elsewhere, while ultimately still yearning for the way things were and secretly wishing to return to that life. It's a beautiful song no matter how deeply you listen to it, since the instrumentals and vocals make it an enjoyable listen even if you don't relate to or contemplate the lyrics too much.
In separation from the actual content of the song, Halah has intertwined itself with me and the way I think and see the world - simply by merit of it being a song I listened to so much during some formative times in my life. From the past few years I've been able to single out 3 core experiences that I associate this song with and think about with a great range of emotions.
- 1st Experience -
I'm 21 now, but since I was 16 I've been in love with the same person - I'll call him Cameron. I have, however, never expressed this or made any attempt to follow through with it. We met when he came to my Sixth Form College (optional further education for ages 16-18 in the UK). He didn't know anyone there except my best friend, and even then they were only family friends who never really spoke. I didn't pay him any mind for a few weeks. Me and my friends walked passed him and his friends on quite a cold day, and I experienced a stupidly cartoonish, practically romance anime level of butterflies out of completely nowhere as I stepped past, I've always imagined it to be the red string of fate bursting into existence. It warmed me right up.
In the 5 years since then we've become very good friends. At some point during that time I acknowledged that friendship was as far as it was going to go for us. I've never exactly been pretty and, even though I like to think I'm funny and can make him laugh, it's fairly clear that he doesn't view me in a romantic way at all. He's had a number of girlfriends during this time and, although it's still as torturous and upsetting to think about girlfriend #4 as it was on girlfriend #1, I've learned to just not think about it a great deal. He's been with his current girlfriend for quite a couple of years by now so it looks like it's probably going to stay solid for a while. Bummer.
Even though Halah is told from the perspective of someone in a new relationship pining for the old one, I've found that it works surprisingly well shifted into the context of unrequited love and being made to watch on as he never once looks your way. On some of the nights when it's felt the worst, when I've been utterly miserable at the fact I'm never getting what I want and I have failed over and over at forcing myself to get over it, the lyrics and sombreness and desperation of Halah have completely sent me over the edge.
While it may be self-destructive to listen to something like that while emotionally vulnerable, it has attached itself to me and rooted itself into this facet of my life. Maybe one day when this whole situation is a distant memory, I'll still be able to hear the rumble from the lonely late-night train ride where I listened to Halah and tried not to cry, or still be able to feel the fine rain on my face from the evening walk back from my lecture where I listened to Halah and tried not to cry, or still be able to see all the pictures I have of him that I would spend the night looking at, begging and pleading with God, month after month, year after year, where I listened to Halah and sobbed into my pillow.
-End of Entry 1-
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