Apple Music continues to have albums pop up in the "heart" section that pleasantly surprise me. a-ha's "Hunting High and Low" showed up today and I could not help but listen to the whole thing and remember how much it spoke to me when I was in high school, sophomore year. I received it on vinyl as a birthday present from my best friend at the time and remember thinking it was the neatest, most beautifully moody thing I ever heard.

Even more effective, though, was their follow-up album Scoundrel Days which I think still sounds as good as it did back way back when. AllMusic's review captures it quite well:


by Ned Raggett:

While not quite as strong as the band's debut, Scoundrel Days is still a-ha succeeding as a marketed "pretty boy" band which can connect musically and lyrically as much as any musical sacred cow. The opening two songs alone make for one of the best one-two opening punches around: the tense edge of the title track, featuring one of Morten Harket's soaring vocals during the chorus and a crisp, pristine punch in the music, and "The Swing of Things," a moody, elegant number with a beautiful synth/guitar arrangement (plus some fine drumming courtesy of studio pro Michael Sturgis) and utterly lovelorn lyrical sentiments that balance on the edge of being overheated without quite going over. Although the rest of the disc never quite hits as high as the opening, it comes close more often than not. A definite downturn is the band's occasional attempts to try and prove themselves as a "real" band by rocking out, as on "I've Been Losing You" -- there's really no need for it, and as a result they sound much more "fake," ironically enough. Other songs can perhaps only be explained by the need to translate lyrics -- "We're Looking for the Whales" isn't an environmental anthem, and neither is "Cry Wolf," but both also don't really succeed in using nature as romantic metaphor. When a-ha are on, though, they're on -- "October" snakes along on a cool bass/keyboard arrangement and a whispery vocal from Harket; "Maybe Maybe" is a quirky little pop number that's engagingly goofy; while "Soft Rains of April" captures the band at its most dramatic, with the string synths giving Harket a perfect bed to launch into a lovely vocal, concluding with a sudden, hushed whisper. The '80s may be long gone, but Scoundrel Days makes clear that not everything was bad back then.

Sometimes, I just feel like I am going to tell the person I like I like her, which is not something I could or should ever do. I know this may sound incredibly odd, even nonsensical, but I feel like telling someone besides myself will keep me from saying it to her one day in an unguarded and really off moment. I do not think I would because I would be too afraid to and yet, somehow, the fear (that I will somehow tell her) is also there. And, so, I think of my blog as a way to safely send it out there, no matter how silly that may be. It really is so hard to care about someone you are not supposed to...

sometimes you have to close your heart when you most want to open it...

and sometimes you just can't tell someone how you feel about them.

I am starting to think that the only cure for unrequited love is knowing that there isn't one, at least not if the love you feel is real. I really do not think real love ever goes away and though there are those who claim one-sided love isn't real, who are they to say so? Do they know what is in your heart? Do they know why it makes you sad to see someone you care about sad? Have they really walked in your shoes as you tread extra carefully around someone you care so much about? People who don't understand and would only judge...well, they can't possibly help any more scorn on me than I have already heaped on myself.

I think most people, especially most people who know better (and I may be seriously lacking in a lot of areas, but I know better than to have feelings I should not have), know that no one would chose to feel something for someone that can never be returned.

So, for now at least, until I can figure out things better, there are only two things I can do to keep forging ahead in all of what I am feeling: telling myself it is okay to have someone in your heart as long as you know and accept they will never be in your life and caring from afar and praying for them silently. Those are the only two things I can do that keep me from hating on myself for loving someone I shouldn't...if that all makes sense.

I happen to believe in God and consider myself Christian, but it really bothers and saddens me that people think that praying alone is more than enough to help us when we are suffering. Just like I really, really believe that I cannot "pray away my gay," I also do not believe that faith and prayer alone can cure depression. This article just speaks to me so much I cannot stop thinking about it:


"I don't think it is diminishing Christ's power for anyone to use whatever other possibilities exist to improve themselves physically or mentally. I don't think that it means a lack of faith or a lack of understanding in the bounty of the Atonement to try to lift yourself up to receive it. I think that perhaps instead of pointing the finger at those who are suffering depression, we might as a Christian people do a better job of asking what we can do, listening to those who need help, and praying for them and for ourselves to be more kind, more sensitive and understanding, and to do whatever lifting needs to be done. Instead of coming to Jesus, perhaps people who are depressed need us to come to them, and to bring Jesus with us."


You can read the rest here. It is just amazing to me, in the best way possible:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mette-ivie-harrison/just-come-to-jesus_b_7927634.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592

Another part that just got to me to so very much is here:

"Another problem is confusing cause and effect. It can be very easy to assume that when other people suffer problems, it is because they aren't making the right choices. If only they were more like us, we think, then they wouldn't have those problems. I don't have those problems, and it must be because of the differences between their lifestyle and mine. This is something akin to the assumption that if I've never had a car accident, it's because I'm a superb driver, rather than related to pure luck or only driving on streets that are have very little traffic."

I think the above really affects me because I think of some of the extremely heartless and even moronic things people say after someone commits suicide. Just because you have not personally experienced something does not mean that it is not real to someone else nor that it is not something genuinely, horrifically painful for them, to the point that the thought of non-existence becomes much more beautiful and welcoming than the thought of existence and waking up every day to new possibilities would be to those who are not suffering so intensely.

The world really does need more empathy and the more we can truly try and deeply understand someone with whom we have no common experiences at all, the more we can become better about not judging them and understanding that as wonderful as faith and belief and prayer can be, it really is okay and even life-saving to look for professional help.

I had a really tough night of sleeping and dreaming last night. And I had a lot of dreams for someone who fell asleep so late and did not sleep that long. I found out when I did a Google search that having more dreams than you would on a regular night of sleeping is actually linked to both sleeping less and depression.

There is so much information on just this aspect within dreams that the three articles below are just a small sample, though definitely some of the best ones:


"In the 1970s, psychologists noted that people suffering from depression also report more dreams than average. In fact, people who are clinically depressed may dream three or four times as much. The quality of REM dreams (also called “paradoxical sleep”) is different too: more intense emotions, more negative themes, more nightmares, and more unpleasant dreams, in general." from:  http://dreamstudies.org/2009/09/15/depression-ssri-and-dreams/


http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/08/dreaming-depression-and-how-sleep-affects-emotions/261051/


http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-less-sleep-means-more-dreams/


When I was younger and would go to sleep sad I actually would have beautiful dreams that were so good they made waking up worse instead of better. I never could find a link between the two and, in fact, articles I have found seem to suggest going to sleep sad makes you actually dream sadder. There are so many aspects related to dreaming I want to research and I also have to wonder: do we just have more hope in our hearts when we are younger so that is why we can have such beautiful dreams when we are sad? Is it just a weird fluke? Or is there a part of our brains trying to give us a break, like say...when we are trying to desperately escape our grief?

Right after my grandmother died years ago and for months after she passed away, I would dream she was still alive. There were wonderful dreams...until I woke up and remembered the truth. People experiencing the loss of a loved one often have dreams like this and mention that very brief second between sleep and fully waking where they have forgotten for a second and the dream is lovely...and then everything comes crashing in with remembrance.

I have always found dreams interesting to read about and even enjoyed some of my own dreams and had some amazingly wonderful ones...but the worse the dreams become and the harder they are to deal with, the more I think I would just love nights of no remembering. They say you cannot not dream, that even if you think you did not dream on a certain night, you actually did and are just not remembering. I am starting to think that I kind of envy people who never remember theirs...