#20 Radiohead Pyramid Song 2001
This is the top 20 now. Everything you've read so far has been fun and folly, surface and simple. We dive............deep......deeper to the depths of my heart and soul. No holding back. My love of music prevents me from doing so. 1998,1999, 2000, and 2001 were not great years. They could have been. But I was a prisoner of loss, disillusion, fear, doubt, loneliness, regret, anger and deep deep depression like a plague, raining down steel mallets crushing me in my footsteps, carving out my innards and giving them away, locking me out of the world outside of my head. There was nothing out there, I was sure of it. Severe heartbreak, my grandfather passing away in '99, moving to NYC for a new start, another escape, a place away from Rochester where everything had disintegrated, everyone had fooled me. A fading reality, really because when I got there....it was no better.
I was living at a YMCA in Brooklyn.....roaches, addicts, sharing a bathroom with the scum scraped from earth's underbelly....nicotine soaked wallpaper....I embraced it.
I was living in a loft in Brooklyn with 2 roommates from good Connecticut homes who eventually went crazy from drugs and left me to take over....I hadn't left my room for two years...amped on ephedrine to crawl the walls, drowning in alcohol to build newer, inpenetrable ones.
I saw my city crash and burn and get hollowed out to a husk in September 2001. It is something I will never ever forget ,The faces, the smells, the pictures of lost souls..... and a part of me was left there to wander aimlessly and survive.
I had to find a way out. I was tired of looking up to see the bottom of my shoes, so tired of wasting away, waking up paralyzed......I had friends and family I would not call, I had memories I would not release.......I had one thing left I could trust........music.
There is a soundtrack for these times. There always had been, and there always will be. When the only thing you can do is retreat , regress and fade away.....you can chose to fight or you can choose to lose. Radiohead was one of the bands that helped me stand up, turn the doorknob and battle the days, knock the dark lights out of the nights......and love NYC.
I took consideration for songs on this list very seriously.....and up until one half hour ago(its 9:21 pm)..I had a different Radiohead song picked for # 20. There were 3 to choose from. I remember telling you about "goosebump material" before this list started. Pyramid Song from Amnesiac, Radiohead's album from 2001 is just a monumental song. Its like God descending and putting his hand on my shoulder... My gooseflesh rises like soldiers....like armor for angels whenever I hear it......it was absolutely essential for me to have and to hold in 2001, it was part of me. It still is.....like a snapshot in a junk drawer..that you happen upon.......
Today my son was going through the drawers of what I call the Pyramid in our house...a triangular shaped piece of furniture with drawers......he pulled out a pile of pictures and scattered them on the floor in a flurry of 2 year old mischief.....they were the pictures I took on the evening of September 11, 2001 from the west bank of Williamsburg, Brooklyn looking into lower Manhattan as the smoke billowed into heaven and the forever emptiness took hold........It was a coincidence that made me realize Pyramid Song for today........
Its quite difficult to explain to people who don't "get" Radiohead.......I'm tired of it actually. If you don't know by now, you never will.... I put this song on with headphones before stepping on the J train which took me into Manhattan every day. I was crippled with anxiety at the time, strung out on sadness....I used to picture having a panic/heart attack while on the train and worry about everyone being late to work as my heart stopped, over and over...day after day............I used this song to cope........to live again....
Jumped into a river
black eyed angels swam with me
a moon full of stars and astral cars
and all the figures I used to see
all my lovers were there with me
all my past and futures
and we all went to heaven in a little rowboat
there was nothing to fear nothing to doubt
there was nothing to fear nothing to doubt...................
Wecome to the top 20.
This is the top 20 now. Everything you've read so far has been fun and folly, surface and simple. We dive............deep......
I was living at a YMCA in Brooklyn.....roaches, addicts, sharing a bathroom with the scum scraped from earth's underbelly....nicotine soaked wallpaper....I embraced it.
I was living in a loft in Brooklyn with 2 roommates from good Connecticut homes who eventually went crazy from drugs and left me to take over....I hadn't left my room for two years...amped on ephedrine to crawl the walls, drowning in alcohol to build newer, inpenetrable ones.
I saw my city crash and burn and get hollowed out to a husk in September 2001. It is something I will never ever forget ,The faces, the smells, the pictures of lost souls..... and a part of me was left there to wander aimlessly and survive.
I had to find a way out. I was tired of looking up to see the bottom of my shoes, so tired of wasting away, waking up paralyzed......I had friends and family I would not call, I had memories I would not release.......I had one thing left I could trust........music.
There is a soundtrack for these times. There always had been, and there always will be. When the only thing you can do is retreat , regress and fade away.....you can chose to fight or you can choose to lose. Radiohead was one of the bands that helped me stand up, turn the doorknob and battle the days, knock the dark lights out of the nights......and love NYC.
I took consideration for songs on this list very seriously.....and up until one half hour ago(its 9:21 pm)..I had a different Radiohead song picked for # 20. There were 3 to choose from. I remember telling you about "goosebump material" before this list started. Pyramid Song from Amnesiac, Radiohead's album from 2001 is just a monumental song. Its like God descending and putting his hand on my shoulder... My gooseflesh rises like soldiers....like armor for angels whenever I hear it......it was absolutely essential for me to have and to hold in 2001, it was part of me. It still is.....like a snapshot in a junk drawer..that you happen upon.......
Today my son was going through the drawers of what I call the Pyramid in our house...a triangular shaped piece of furniture with drawers......he pulled out a pile of pictures and scattered them on the floor in a flurry of 2 year old mischief.....they were the pictures I took on the evening of September 11, 2001 from the west bank of Williamsburg, Brooklyn looking into lower Manhattan as the smoke billowed into heaven and the forever emptiness took hold........It was a coincidence that made me realize Pyramid Song for today........
Its quite difficult to explain to people who don't "get" Radiohead.......I'm tired of it actually. If you don't know by now, you never will.... I put this song on with headphones before stepping on the J train which took me into Manhattan every day. I was crippled with anxiety at the time, strung out on sadness....I used to picture having a panic/heart attack while on the train and worry about everyone being late to work as my heart stopped, over and over...day after day............I used this song to cope........to live again....
Jumped into a river
black eyed angels swam with me
a moon full of stars and astral cars
and all the figures I used to see
all my lovers were there with me
all my past and futures
and we all went to heaven in a little rowboat
there was nothing to fear nothing to doubt
there was nothing to fear nothing to doubt...................
Wecome to the top 20.
 | 02 - Pyramid Song.mp3 11283K Play Download |
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