Moods - Brooding

A little poetry:

My heart is sad, my hopes are gone,
My blood runs coldly through my breast;
And when I perish, thou alone
Wilt sigh above my place of rest.

"An Wilt Thou Weep When I Am Low?" by Lord Byron, 1808


Brooding, as defined by Websters:

1. preoccupied with depressing, morbid, or painful memories or thoughts
2. cast in subdued light so as to convey a somewhat threatening atmosphere


Brooding isn't something I do often. I personally prefer to ignore whatever thoughts I have in my head and to push them so far back into a place in my mind where they virtually don't exist. I let them fester there until they either make me sick with stress, go away, or work themselves out. Brooding is dwelling and I don't really like to dwell, but alas it happens. I have always associated brooding with poets like Lord Byron and D.H. Lawrence who appeared to be overwrought and depressed with some unknown event in their past. That somehow makes the process a masculine thing, when really, brooding is for everyone. While it doesn't feel ladylike and genteel, it is a process for those who can't forgive others, who let their problems weigh them down, and who certainly can't forgive themselves for any wrong doing.

It is a process for those of us who like to punish ourselves in fantastic mental ways.

You can brood about a million things, from the lover who cheated on you to the type of shoes to wear with today's outfit to the time you were 5 and shoplifted a pack of gum while your mother was grocery shopping. You can work yourself into a frenzy over death, over taxes, over the moment you screwed up your first kiss. You can hurt yourself over and over again with the pain of hurting someone you love, the loss of breaking a favorite tea cup, or that time you didn't stop to help someone in need that always stuck with you. You can mull over the flaws you hate about yourself, the horrible things someone once told you when they wanted you to know how they felt about you, and that one time you did something most people would consider socially unacceptable.

Brooding is where those eternal should have, could have, would have thoughts are played out. It's not a bad thing, but it isn't always the easiest experience ever. How that plays out musically I'm not sure, but I do know I've put together this week's play list chock full of songs that I think fit brooding, my brooding mood, most perfectly.

Brooding is an all encompassing emotional thing. Why shouldn't the soundtrack for it be the same way?