A question for all the men, and the women who love them, in the audience: How often do you awaken in the morning, and once your day gets rolling, discover you’re finding yourself more emotional than usual? Whether it’s being more passionate in your response to the morning zoo’s antics on the radio during your commute, people on the road annoying you to an unusual degree, the wife and kids bothering you more than usual, or hearing a song that seems to have an unusually profound effect on you. Ever feel yourself overreacting and not knowing why? The next question is, are these all manifestations of different types of emotion, or different manifestations of the same emotion? When I recently had it happen to me, it clearly was the latter. This emotion could have manifested itself in many different ways–not all of them pleasant–but fortunately, it went the way of simple joy. It’s a great thing to experience, especially without the use of any chemical compounds.
I realize this random emotion, for women, is as common as sliced bread. It happens with hormonal fluctuations from the menstrual cycle. I believe that in some cases, correlating these emotional and physical fluctuations with natural occurrences like moon phases, tides, weather etc. lead to some women feeling a grander connection with nature. I figure it’s why women are largely the only ones who buy into astrology and the earth-based pagan religions like Wicca. I also think it’s why people who feel it diminish are seduced into amplifying it artificially through drugs and developing horrible addictions as a result.
But for men, what does it signify? Men generally seem to experience emotions differently and in much lesser magnitudes than women do. So when it happens that something as simple as a good TV commercial or a meaningful song can bring emotions welling up within us, what causes it? It seems to be so clearly an un-male thing to have happen.
Whatever it is, it hit me this morning. After a great night out with friends at a cool new bar last night, I woke up a bit groggier than usual, but it wasn’t until about an hour later that a song on my MP3 player triggered it. There’s a handful of songs that will have an emotional effect on me just about any time, but the right song at the right moment… and this was it.
Here’s my list of a few songs like that. What are yours?
1. Linkin Park, “Numb” and “In The End”
2. Filter, “Take a Picture”
3. Stabbing Westward, “Waking Up Beside You”