Seether Concert

***SEETHER CONCERT***

Sometimes I feel like whenever I post a blog announcing my attendance at a concert, all I’m doing is stroking myself. It doesn’t help matters that I pad the text with potential ways in which these concerts could affect my creative life…even though most of the time they don’t. The last time it really did was when I went to the Pain in the Grass festival in 2016 and I wrote a heavy metal song about a drunken fool that sat next to me. Most of the time my concert experiences end up as life events on my Face Book page (now THAT’S what I call stroking myself). To be fair, though, I only post them that way because I don’t have a smart phone to take pictures and I don’t want to bring my digital camera into the mosh pit lest it gets smashed to pieces.

But it’s true, ladies and gentlemen: it’s that time again. This coming Tuesday, Seether is heading to Seattle’s Showbox SoDo and the bands that will open for them are 10 Years and The Dead Deads. I didn’t start listening to Seether until 2012 when they opened for Nickelback at the Tacoma Dome alongside Bush and My Darkest Days. The first Seether album I bought was their greatest hits collection from 2002 to 2013. My favorite songs back then were “Driven Under”, “Fine Again”, and their cover of Wham’s “Careless Whisper”. I also listened to Seether’s duet with Amy Lee called “Broken” on repeat when I came home from the movie theater after seeing Obselidia. Anyone who’s heard me talk about that movie knows it ripped my heart to shreds, so “Broken” was a more than appropriate song to soothe my feels. Seether has a reputation for soothing sorrowful and angry emotions. My collection of their CD’s is now complete and I’m ready for Tuesday.

I don’t have much else to say except for…I’m Garrison Kelly and I’ll see you next time! My brain decided to be in zombie mode today, so I don’t feel like doing a great deal of writing. On the positive side, I did get some reading done today. It won’t be long before I write a passing grade review of “Fifty Shames of Earl Grey” by Fanny Merkin (real name Andrew Shaffer). One reviewer accurately described this author as the Weird Al Yankovich of erotica. Who am I to disagree with him?

***LYRICS OF THE DAY***

“Whoever said this pain would ever go away didn’t know what it meant to be here without you. Is everything you see reminding you of me? Does it hurt when you breathe too? ‘Cause it does when I do. I hate to feel this way. My days all feel the same. And yesterday was proof that tomorrow will too. No matter what they say, can’t drink it all away, ‘cause all that I do is think about you. When anybody says your name, I want to run away. I keep remembering I can’t forget you. It doesn’t matter what I try, it happens anyways. It’s been forever and I can’t forget you. With every single day, it won’t go away, the way I feel about you. And when it’s said and done, you’re the only one. And I can’t regret you, ‘cause I can’t forget you. Stop haunting my dreams. Please set me free.”

-My Darkest Days singing “Can’t Forget You”-

"Broken" by Seether and Amy Lee

You know what the worst part is about having a boring life? You can run away from it for a little while. You can kick it in the Caribbean, you can mingle in Mexico, you can have fish and chips in the UK, but once the vacation is over, it’s back home to a boring life. It feels good to be home every time I come back from a sabbatical, but then the loneliness sets in and it’s back to the drawing board again. Although eating at Applebee’s isn’t considered a vacation, it was an escape from the boredom of home. And then when we were in the car, I had “Broken” by Seether and Amy Lee playing on my MP3 player to drive the point home, no pun intended.

This song was obviously recorded during a time in Shaun Morgan and Amy Lee’s lives when they were still a power couple. Two hard rock icons singing about how much they want to steal each other’s pain and how they’re broken when they’re lonesome. In other words, they couldn’t live without each other. And then one day in the mid 2000’s, they broke up in an ugly fashion and wrote hateful songs about each other. I’m not sure if Seether still plays “Broken” during their live sets, but I know it’s on their greatest hits album.

The reason “Broken” is so special to me is because it conveys the feeling of impending doom when it comes to my environment stealing my pain away. I can go to Canada as many times as I want, but in the end, I still have a slow-paced life here in Port Orchard, Washington. Sometimes a slow pace is a good thing, but it really becomes slow when the boredom keeps me from doing what I love the most: write my heart out. That’s when you know you have a boring life: you’re so bored that doing what you love isn’t what you feel like doing at all.

“Broken” also reminds me to find things to steal my pain more often so that I don’t have long gaps of boredom and sadness. That’s why it’s important to me to write Fireball Nightmare chapters as much as possible. And when I have writer’s block or I just plain don’t feel like writing my main prose, then I write an entry for Garrison’s Library or I write a journal for my Deviant Art account (my username is Garrison-Kelly and my avatar is the Jolly Green Giant (look me up)). And then there are times when reading a chapter of my book is enough to steal my pain. I’m currently reading “The Fault In Our Stars” by John Green and Augustus Waters is someone who could sing in the style of “Broken” and have it make sense.

I once had somebody tell me true happiness isn’t about the big things in life. It’s about finding little things and stringing them together to make a happy life. I’ve tried to follow that advice for so long and whenever I can’t, I turn to the music of Seether for comfort. One of these days, I’ll keep my stream of fun going into infinite. An occupied mind is a happy mind, which is something prisoners learn on their first day of incarceration. In a way, I feel like a prisoner of my own boredom. The pain theft would be the visitation rights that are granted to me by my friends and family. I can do this. I know I can.

　

***WRESTLING QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“I don’t get hyped! I stay hyped!”

-Mojo Rawley-