Ugh. Did I just quit? It’s hard to say right now, I guess. I’ll have to wait and see. For now, I’m just gonna go lay down, but I can’t do that in silence. I walk to my room and flip through some CDs. Prefab Sprout’s a little too jumpy right now. The Smiths? Maybe. The The… Not now. I guess I already knew what I was gonna pick before I started flipping through, but… I pick up Stygian Stimulus’ “Other Half.”

It’s a little less popular than their other two albums, probably because they were first getting started, but even though I do genuinely love all of their stuff, this one feels a lot more, I don’t know, genuine. Again, I’m not saying the rest of their pieces are bad or inauthentic, but this one… Something about this one. It’s sensitive, introspective. A little less showy and virtuosic (in the second half, anyway) and more about getting stuff off their chests. They had something more to say. I think this one is actually what they’re all about. This is the, ‘Hey world, this is us. The people we’ve met, the things we’ve seen, the fights we’ve had and whatever else. Let us talk for a sec,’ album. Again, it feels a little out of place when lined up with their arena rock stuff, but I think it’s special. It’s a shame they never really play anything from it but “Severed” anymore, even though it’s really kickass. That’s a really good one for all three of them to show off their skills. I just can’t help but wonder, especially with some certain tracks, what happened that caused them to write those sorts of lyrics. The subject matter is always vague, but everything points to something really awful happening. I guess that’s another reason why I like them so much. Even in my worst moments, they remind me that someone else has felt the depths of human pain.

“Severed” is weird in a way. It explains a sort of emptiness that should be obvious to the singer, and he describes it being so close that he can practically ‘feel it breathing’ on him…. But he just can’t find it; that missing part of himself. I wonder if that goes for just Venus or the whole band, or maybe he’s just playing a character. No, words like those had to have come from somewhere real inside. I've learned that missing a part of yourself is just unbearable. I hope I find Rhea. I hope Venus has found peace since writing that song.