Fidelity.

I'll just keep with a music theme in my writing until songs stop being the main precipitator, (Eh, more like a condensator), of my most current feelings and ideas.  That's okay, yeah?  Good.

I can't even remember how I "discovered" Regina Spektor:  I think most possibly from the youtube video suggestions that are stacked on the right side of the screen when I looked up a video by a similar artist.  Oh. I think it might have been NPR! Fresh Air with Terry Gross.  I'm sure of it.  Spektor famously left the Soviet Union during Perestroika, leaving her piano behind.  All of this was important because finding out she was Russian, I bought the CD for my little sister.  My sister graduated from high school in 2006.  She is half Ukrainian (Transcarpathian), and was interested in and excelled in Russian Studies in high school and college.  She continued to read and learn on her own. She is very smart, that sister of mine.  She recently shared books with me written by Belarusian journalist Svetlana Alexievich, which have educated me greatly.

I'm not really planning on writing anymore about Soviet/Russian history, but I'm giving you some background on the context of how I heard Regina Spektor's songs when I first heard them.  You might better understand how I viewed her music before I happened upon her song "Fidelity" several years later in my life, with a different brain. 

Spektor isn't only a "Russian" singer, but an Indie singer.  She's a beautiful singer:  unique, folksy, and very intelligent. 

I never loved nobody fully
Always one foot on the ground
And by protecting my heart truly
I got lost in the sounds
I hear in my mind
All these voices
I hear in my mind all these words
I hear in my mind all this music

I loved many of her songs, and really enjoyed most of her albums... but she wasn't an artist that I kept in my regular rotation.  I'm not sure why.  I really did like her.  I loved her albums Soviet Kitsch, and Begin to Hope, yet, it wasn't until I heard the Jasmine Thompson cover of "Fidelity" on a "Sia Station" I had created on Pandora, that I really felt the words, as opposed to hearing the quirky style of Spektor's version, when I was younger and in different circumstances.  We change every day, I think.  We change and hear, taste, smell, feel things a bit differently.  We should change and grow.  We shouldn't stop moving.

And it breaks my heart
And it breaks my heart
And it breaks my heart
It breaks my heart

I was cleaning the house, and the Pandora station was playing from the television.  It was the song and hearing it from her voice, and her pared-down, acoustic version, that I truly listened.  And I stopped.  I had never heard Jasmine Thompson.  She mostly does covers.  I sat on the floor staring at the screen, which as you probably know, doesn't change when you listen to Pandora.  It's a black screen, with the artist's album artwork, and then the title of the song and name of the artist in white lettering. And I listened.

I never love nobody fully
Always one foot on the ground
And by protecting by heart truly
I got lost
In the sounds
I hear in my mind
All these voices
I hear in my mind all these words
I hear in my mind 
All this music
And it breaks my heart
It breaks my heart

Did I think she was writing about regret for having fallen in love?  Maybe it's more the cliche idea that "it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all." She does say "suppose" before what seems to be the recollection of fond memories.  Is she trying to imagine who she would be, as an individual, without those experiences and memories?  Or, did she learn to let go and open herself up to love, even if it seems bittersweet?  And...

And suppose I never ever met you
Suppose we never fell in love
Suppose I never ever let you kiss me so sweet and so soft
Suppose I never ever saw you
Suppose we never ever called
Suppose I kept on singing love songs just to break my own fall
Just to break my fall
Just to break my fall
Break my fall
Break my fall

...Maybe she's just living in an imaginary world, though.  Was she just trying to believe in and feel things that didn't seem possible for her?  Did he start to find a way to make meaning out of all the music, and voices, and words in her head to try to stop breaking her own heart.  She had to break her own fall.  Otherwise, she'd be falling... She'd just be falling forever. 

How about me?  I was listing on a Pandora radio station, playing through the speakers of a television.  I was staring at that screen and listening, and I thought, oh... I have been lost for a long time:  and I knew it.  I knew I was looping.  I was a needle stuck on the vinyl LP, and the record player wasn't balanced, was it?  It wasn't level.  I was trapped in one groove.  And who do you talk to about that, because being in my own head for so long was obviously very destructive... Hmmmm...   

"Hey, so... I'm not here... um... I'm not sure how to come back.  You have any ideas?" 

Oh!  Regina Spektor has a song called "On the Radio", which was also on her Begin to Hope album. Maybe I should also mention that song, since it expresses the, "Hey so..."  moment in time, quite clearly. Hear one song... feel another...  That's poetry? That's life.

(...On the radio
We heard November Rain
That solo's really long
But it's a pretty song
We listened to it twice
'Cause the DJ was asleep
This is how it works
You're young until you're not
You love until you don't
You try until you can't
You laugh until you cry
You cry until you laugh
And everyone must breathe
Until their dying breath
No, this is how it works
You peer inside yourself
You take the things you like
And try to love the things you took
And then you take that love you made
And stick it into some
Someone else's heart
Pumping someone else's blood
You hope it don't get harmed
But even if it does
You'll just do it all again...) Here.

Oh goodness...  I'm off the rails and this post is getting a little confusing, me thinks. 

Perestroika. 
Original artists.
Transcarpathia. 
Hearing.

Belarusian journalists.

Song covers.  
Feeling.
Looping.  
Song Lyrics. 


I'm either doing an exceptional, adept job weaving all of these subjects together to explain a greater message, or I'm scattered and losing my focus, and your attention...  Boo!  

Wake up!  Obviously, I'm super thoughtful and everything I write makes sense.  I don't lose my focus, blah, blah, blah.  I'm so super, hyper-focused you probably can't follow what I'm saying... You don't even know where I'm going for paragraphs, and then you get to the end and your mind is blown. It all makes complete sense.  

And Fidelity! Fidelity (fi·del·i·ty fəˈdelədē/ noun) *faithfulness to a person, cause, or belief, demonstrated by continuing loyalty and support. "he sought only the strictest fidelity to justice" synonyms: loyalty, allegiance, obedience.
antonyms:  disloyalty.
*sexual faithfulness to a spouse or partner. synonyms: faithfulness, loyalty, constancy, true-heartedness,

trustworthiness, dependability, reliability; 

formal troth.

antonyms:

infidelity, disloyalty

Is it ironic she chose to title the song "Fidelity"? So often we are not faithful to our true nature, and not really showing up in life.  I mean, by not living in conscious awareness.  She's lost in the sounds.  If rehearsed often enough, do we begin to believe the folklore we script for ourselves? We drift so reflexively into ignorant, yet steadfast-held beliefs, keeping our world small.  Its smallness might serve to make it all the more
comforting or help us feel in control when we just aren't.  Can we protect our hearts truly?  Should we?  Or couldn't we let it beat to its own rhythm?  Our hearts.  Our lives.  Ourselves.  

I hear in my mind all of these voices
I hear in my mind all of these words
I hear in my mind all of this music

Breaks my Heart
Breaks my heart