I'm listening to: Goo Goo Dolls - Iris

And I'd give up forever to touch you
Cause I know that you feel me somehow
You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be
And I don't want to go home right now

And all I can taste is this moment
And all I can breathe is your life
And sooner or later it's over
I just don't want to miss you tonight

And I don't want the world to see me
Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am

And you can't fight the tears that ain't coming
Or the moment of the truth in your lies
When everything feels like the movies
Yeah you bleed just to know you're alive

And I don't want the world to see me
'Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am



I've been listening to Iris for more than half a decade and only really listened to the lyrics just a couple of days ago (very uncharacteristically, given I'm such a sucker for nice lyrics). It brings back a whole flood of memories, and that they've acquired (figuratively) a vaguely musty feel, shows all the more how they're merely reconstructions, since the original experiences could never be that way. There's so much harbored intensity in the temporal, metaphysical peak of human experience as described, because of the stark contrast between being cognizant of these moments and their inevitable transience.

Though I'm completely ruining everything, I just can't help but mention that a premise central to this idea is "everything's made to be broken". It might not be true, like "everything fades". Thanks to Leibniz, I no longer subscribe unconditionally to Heraclitus's everchanging river, but it doesn't make transitions any easier. In this case, especially when you know you're just a tiny bit shy of reaching whatever it is, coupled with the natural predisposition to be more loss-averse than attracted to the prospect of gains, you've basically put yourself in a very small spot. Not what the song has to bother with, though, but unfortunately it's more often than not the case.

An encounter with near-perfection (again perfection is elusive) therefore has to be broadened as a concept to include some fatalistically unavoidable ending and the accompanying barrage of emotions from hell. Even stoic acceptance doesn't preclude a general sense of pity/sadness for the sweeping evanescence of each distinct, possibly discrete state, that so acutely outlines the human condition. Is there a solution? Probably not. Can anything be done? Take more photos, collect more souvenirs; keepsakes that help your overworked and grossly incommensurate memory out. Above all, a consistently lucid awareness of impending closure is probably indispensable, for obvious reasons.

Reason and emotion quite apparently don't always cooperate, much less agree with each other. Ephemeralness and the idea of infinite change plagues the mind and its highly constrained ability to conceive quantitatively. Yet there is beauty in a passing moment, like a flower at the height of its bloom, that has the capacity to permanently affect subsequent states. Less tangible than pinning it down, but it's for keeps just the same.

If you've found It, don't let it go.