And I am what is left: A puppet!

Whether it be a wave of bittersweet relaxation washing over me from the chord progression near the end of Holst's Saturn from The Planets suite or hearing Daryl Palumbo's blood-curdling screams and claiming them as my own, thus granting myself the gratification that accompanies such pure, uninhibited release, I've always felt that music translates emotions better than a lifetime of words ever could. It seems unlikely that I would be the only person to encounter this experience, but the best way I can describe it is achieving catharsis vicariously through music.While avoiding the labyrinth of details that lead to the demise of a genuinely fairy tale story, I'll go as far as to say that I've seen better days than the ones endured these previous two weeks. With that in mind, I did what I always do to avoid slipping beyond insanity's event horizon and found solace in music. Though unintentionally so, I've come to realize I embarked on the mission to find the one song that perfectly described my perplexing, depressing situation. Without further ado, I give you, Driftwood: A Fairy Tale:So he would sulk and drink and mopeand cross his arms and hope to die.And then a fairy came one nightto bring this sorry boy to life.She pulled some stringsand spun him about.That boy sprang upand began to shout,"My arms, my legs, my heart, my face - they're alive!"And she would cry, "Liar, liar!What have I done?You're no lover, and I'm no fighter."(The story goes on)So he would buy her things and kiss her hairto show he was for real.And she would take those gifts and kissesthough just stringing him along.She knew about those wooden boys-it's an empty love to fill the void."Pinocchio! Oh boy, how your nose has grown!"So he would cry, "Liar, liar!I'll prove it to you!"But then it grewHe had grown tired of herSo it was trueHe left her apartmentAnd he walked all night long'til he was stopped by the shore of the ocean.But still he walked on, amongst the whalesand the waves, and screamed"Liar, liar!"And his wooden body floated away.He just drifed away.And now I wonder how I was made...My arms, my legs, my heart, my face,my name is Driftwood.If you fall into the category of most people, I'll assume you've never heard the song, so realistically you're missing out on its true ingenuity. First of all, Cursive is an amazing band fronted by the depressingly poetic Tim Kasher, and while I'm admittedly not well-versed in their full catalog, I know their two most recent albums (but this one especially) are masterpieces of misery. Regardless, I think the gist of the story being told here is easy to follow and will likely evoke an unpleasant memory or two.The song describes a situation many of us may unfortunately find all too familiar: an imbalanced relationship, but more specifically one in which the used discovers the act of being used. In the case of Driftwood, we have a boy stimulated to life by his first love only to eventually realize that she just sees him as the "next in line" and maintains her illusion of love until moving on to the next victim. The first verse ultimately describes their fairy tale introduction, followed by the fairy's realization that she can't fight her own tendencies and that she neither believes Driftwood is being honest nor that she is deserving of him (though other interpretations are equally accurate). Driftwood discovers this in verse two when his nose calls his bluff and he realizes this isn't what he was looking for either, but by the time he figures out what's going on it has destroyed him and he decides to disappear into oblivion, forever questioning everything he felt that "brought him to life."What really gets me about this song is that if even but for a day, an hour, a minute or just a split-second, this song exactly captured how I felt, thereby providing the narrative for my most recent fortnight. I'll state for the record that I don't think I'm as pathetic as our sad puppet friend here, and at present I think some of the lines are a bit of a stretch given my interpretation, but all that aside it's still amazing how eerily close this hits to home.As this song is my guide to a promising future from a troubled past, to a time when my name is no longer Driftwood and my strings are but illusions, I can hold my head high and cry out that which keeps the world turning, that which breeds hope and inspiration, that which makes it all worthwhile. I will cry out that which enables a man to gather the fragments of his shattered soul and build himself anew:The worst is over.