Music Monday: This Is Your Life

"And you open the door and you step inside,
We're inside our hearts--Now imagine your pain as a
white ball of healing light..."


I first saw Fight Club on a week night at a local dollar theater with some other lads not long after having (voluntarily) moved out of the structure that had been our home and beginning a separation from my wife. This situation would ultimately find resolution at the end of our marriage of seven years. At that terrible low point of my life this film (surprise!) spoke to what I was experiencing at the time: a loss of relationships, family and (a part of) what I had perceived to be an important part of my larger self. I was angry, hurt, ashamed and generally feeling pretty low...

Like all art (music, film, photography, etceteras) that has meaning to we as individuals, the prism shifts as we get older and the way I look at this film (and song) has changed too.

Now happily re-married and living a relatively stable existence in middle class America, one might think that this silly male-centric film would not jibe with my current personal experience. Nothing could be further from the truth.

When I listen to this song now, it still resonates, but on a different level. Now when I listen carefully between the lyrics, I pick up on things I didn't have either the experience or education to recognize previously: I feel the spirit of Ram Das' teachings and the quest for masculinity expressed in American poet Robert Bly's work. I also feel the terminal nature of my own life (and those I love) not in an "I-dread-death" way, but in a recognition that life is moving in a forward motion toward something which (despite creams and conceits) cannot be avoided.

While this may be a stretch, somehow these thoughts and ideas (however satirically intended) can be seen in the terribly ugly, brutal, fetishistic truth of Fight Club, as represented here on Music Monday by the song This Is Your Life by the Dust Brothers.

Hearing this song again after a few months, I continue to assess my own life and believe that on some level, part of what Tyler espouses might just may be right.

Embrassez votre été invincible!