Finding yourself despite yourself is like taking a stroll in the park with your dog and coming face-to-face with a fire-breathing, 3-legged unicorn. It’s sad how monotonous life can be—how we can get sucked into a devastating routine and we somehow [God only knows how] convince ourselves that we’re happy with our lives [because no doubt it's safe and the known is always easier to handle than the unknown that we have no control over].

Sometimes you put up with what you have because you’re scared of trying harder, scared of what could be lurking behind achieving more in life, going after your dreams. The world is a scary place after all, full of lies and cheats, full of anger, hurt and bitterness—but if we don’t taste a piece the pie, we’ll never know what we missed out on or what could have been and wasted opportunities don’t come twice.

How many wasted opportunities was I wasting? Too many. It’s rather overwhelming when I reflect back on my short-lived life [well, I'm still pretty young, anyway] and realize that rather than learn from my mistakes, I fell back into them again, and again, and again, until I reached the point where my mistakes no longer only affected me, but were affecting those around me too. I should have never made the same mistake twice, let alone actually look for different ways to reach the same result. It was my evil subconscious mind, definitely subconscious…

“I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.” –Michel de Montaigne

I guess I was lost in the gray area between the carefree world of child’s play and the heavy grind of life for a young adult.  Aware of the internal struggle I was facing on an hourly basis, someone told me a few very somber words that changed me in ways I can still hardly believe. “You’ll never find yourself here, because you can’t find what doesn’t exist yet. But you can create yourself here if you allow it to happen.”

The shift from passive recipient of life to active contributor isn’t as straightforward as you might think. It’s easier to live in the here and now, careless of your future, but to think of the sort of damage and setbacks that mindset could be having on my life was my wakeup call.

I had to [still having to] find a balance—somewhere between enjoying now and thinking of my future. The balance is essential [the balance of discovering who we are and who we seek to become] if we have any hope of creating our own lives—our own identity.

“There’s a period of life when we swallow a knowledge of ourselves and it becomes either good or sour inside.” –Pearl Bailey

You’re surrounded by people; you may be taken by many of them, all of which contributes to shaping up your personality. You’ve spent your entire life listening to people, absorbing their opinions and knowledge dislikes until you are molded into bits and pieces of everyone around you. Who are YOU? If you never met all the people you did in your life, who would you have been?

I realized that the answer lies in holding the important aspects of life that influenced who we have been and who we want to become. You have to learn from your mistakes—each mistake you make is an invaluable lesson learned—appreciate the people you have in your life, the people who love you unconditionally and only ask of you to love them back. They need you [your family] and you need them and after all is said and done, they are the only ones who can guide you, help you through life in your search for yourself. And last but not least, you have to actively search for whatever it is you want to fulfill you in the future.

It’s hard to choose and sacrifice, but when you look at the big picture you realize there was never really a choice to make. Closing one door and opening another is hard—but it’s worth the challenge.

“You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition.  What you’ll discover will be wonderful.  What you’ll discover is yourself.” –Alan Alda

My key tracks: Maggot Brain (well obviously, since I’ve been creaming over it up there), Can You Get to That (I recollect with mixed emotions, all the good times we used to have, but you were making preparations for the coming separation and you blew everything we had) and You And Your Folks, Me and My Folks

Garage meets grunge; Uncle Anesthesia is a psychedelic rock album from start to finish, and a fundamental one that every fan of the genre should have in their collection. I’ve probably listened to this album a good 500 times since first being introduced to them by a friend who shared my love for Dinosaur Jr. and I’ve never looked back since.

I love just about their entire discography, but I wanted to mention how underrated Uncle Anesthesia was and still is. Granted, back in the day it was competing against Nirvana’s Nevermind and Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger which led to its defeat, but till this day The Screaming Trees are one of the few grunge bands that were never critically acclaimed in any way apart from a couple of ok-hyped songs (Nearly Lost You / Dollar Bill…I don’t think there are more) and who I believe deserve a whole lot more.

Uncle Anesthesia is a pretty simple album with a shift-a-lot tone; from melodic grunge to deep dark rock to doomy ballads…but it’s all super and will have you picking up your guitar and rocking out. More than super…this is the perfect grunge album for me and with catchy songs like Bed Of Roses, Uncle Anesthesia, Lay Your Head Down, Something About Today, Ocean Of Confusion…and so many more, I really wish more people heard of and listened to this gem.

tldr; if you like Mudhoney, you’ll love The Screaming Trees and let’s all agree that Mark Lanegan is God.

Even if you haven’t listened to the album yet and are waiting to buy it (and I applaud you for your patience which I completely lack, but I swear I’ll be buying this album in every format it comes out in), you’ve probably already heard about 7 tracks that have all been leaked on YouTube from live performances. And from those live performances, I think it’s safe to conclude that they’ve taken a more “dramatic” turn from Boxer which actually had some uhhhh, upbeat tunes (?) (well, as upbeat as The National can get, anyway).

They’ve injected some serious adrenaline into their music here. Alligator was their 1st hit album, and Mr. November was their crowd pleaser with its passion, viciousness and high yelled notes. And what I absolutely love about High Violet is that there’s that same intensity and passion that was in Alligator (and Mr. November) but played out with instruments rather than high vocals which, in my opinion, makes it all that more chilling and brings us back to the nerve-jangling mood found in Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers and some of their self-titled (and yes, Alligator and Boxer but honestly, I don’t see the relation as much as others are claiming).

Terrible Love isn’t as terrible as everyone’s wittily remarking on various review sites, though I agree it doesn’t sound as good as it did when they performed it live on Fallon and the quality was a concern (it’s the opening track and I was worried the whole leaked version was this awful in terms of audio quality but hey, this IS a leaked version so shut up already) HOWEVER, even with the toning down of Devendorf’s mind-blowing drumming, it still grows on you. But remember, this isn’t the final version  and I still hope to God they add more percussions to the final version because it’s truly a shame so much was cut out from their live performance.

The album moves swiftly onto Sorrow which, regardless of how many instruments are playing, blends effortlessly and still manages to feel authentic and warm. “Sorrow found me when I was young, sorrow waited, sorrow won” A perfect broken-hearted, melancholy tune that I can see myself crying to at some point in the future.  Anyone’s Ghost takes us back to All Dolled Up In Straps from the Cherry Tree EP; I think it’s a perfect follow-up of the song with the concept of unrequited love and stalkerish tendencies being nurtured to the point of shadowing a person and driving yourself insane towards self-destruction. Love obsession disjointedly described at its best!

“I’m afraid of everyone and I don’t have the drugs to sort it out,” Afraid Of Everyone is one of the few “dark” songs I’ve heard from The National, with backing vocals that add to its eeriness. It’s not haunting dark, just troubling dark and it’s distressingly lovely. I absolutely love the electro guitar work that comes in phases and then that outro, amazing stuff.

Bloodbuzz Ohio is the only song on High Violet that I feel COULD have (very awkwardly) fit on Boxer (doesn’t it start off like Brainy!?). The tempo sounds like something off Boxer, and even though it’s my least favourite off the album, it’s still a pretty sweet (albeit familiar sounding) track especially the opening lines, “I stand up straight at the foot of your love. I life my shirt up.” BEAUTIFUL.

Lemonworld should get a 5 star ranking for its rough guitar riffs and “Losin’ my breath, doo doo doo doo doo doo doo” alone! This is one of those “instantaneously satisfying” songs that will make you grit down hard and tap your feet out of tune. AND NOTICE, Matt stays so sombre throughout, no yells, no high vocals, very heart-wretchedly drenched sounding throughout.

You’d think Runaway would be overplayed at 5:30mins long with the same ardent lyrics repeated over, “I won’t be no runaway, cos I won’t run” and “What makes you think I enjoy being led to the flood? We’ve got another thing coming undone and it’s taking us over” — but its spaciousness is actually meticulously delectable and you don’t even find yourself waiting for a high climax to bring it to an end because it’s so vulnerable…which makes it another great example of how this album succeeds without  Berninger having to pull another Mr. November.

Conversation 16 was one of my instant favorites, “I was afraid I’d eat your brains, cos I’m evil” – stunning lyrics, amazing rock-out music, and the chorus will stick in your head for hours. I kept singing this on the bus yesterday and scared the guy in front of me.

England and Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks are both great examples of how The National leisurely build a song to impressive heights and get the blood pumping around your body at strange speed.

I don’t care how many of you call this album depressing because there really isn’t a single “depressing” song on this album, nor does it at any point come across mawkish.  It may be “miserable love music” at its best, but Berninger’s voice coupled with the beautiful vociferous musical arrangement give their music a sense of hope…and even romance.

And essentially, this is why I rank this album higher than any of her preceding or subsequent ones; there are just too many emotional stories, tales and secrets waiting to be unraveled in this album, all that are incredibly significant in their individual compelling ways, and in some ways, even entwined.

When comparing it to her succeeding albums, you can really appreciate the amount of thought that went into this album—it’s mysterious and haunting in a way that White Chalk tried to intensify but only succeeded in dwindling its impact (Mark Prindle disagrees with me on this) and the lyrics were something else entirely. I’ll be the first to admit that this was underdone, back when PJ wasn’t bothered with what would be a flop in the rankings, back when she was eating potatoes alone for months to help stir her creativity and dig deep into her soul.

Songs like Angelene, My Beautiful Leah (I just love the way she cuts it off abruptly at the end) and The River (chilling) really portray PJ’s talent in all its glory and manage to reveal Polly Jean’s magic and diversity in music because she is assorted, like a bag of gloomy skittles.

it resembles something different for every person. ;- )

a cloud in the shape of a butterfly. morning dew on a bunch of flowers in my next door neighbor’s garden. a “secret” message written to someone’s love affair on my 5 dollar bill. an employee who vulgarly cussed his employer on the door of an unhygienic bathroom cubicle i found myself having to use.

the list is endless, and, as a minimalist, it’s these small, otherwise overlooked, occurrences that inspire me on a daily basis. life throws a lot of inspiration your way, every single day, some not as obvious as others. you just have to “look” around and be inspired by the simple beauties of your everyday life.