Linkin Park is coming out with another album. Like every time, I’m eagerly following the developments, including the release of singles that would eventually be part of the entire album. And like every time, I’m comparing the tracks with what we know to be LP. Or think we do. Because this time they’ve released tracks that don’t seem like LP, don’t feel like LP, and include a female “feat.” Did LP too give in to the pop/rap or nothing phenomenon or are we too addicted to knowing a certain screaming Chester Bennigton ? Both maybe, but what is certain is that these tracks are a good point to look back on what I, as an individual, connected with. I connected with the idea of pain and bitterness that the music seemed to express. And like everything in life, it had its stereotypes.
Let’s fall back a little bit. I’m in Class VIII, in my final days in Meerut. I’ve just discovered the utility of cassettes, and have purchased, along with a lot of Bollywood music, two albums of LP – Reanimation and Meteora. Reanimation, as my 14-year old self didn’t realise, was a remix album. But Meteora was something different. As old timers will tell you, cassettes have the benefit of forcing you to listen to the same band for a substantial amount of time – time taken from the first song to the last. Yes, you can fast forward, but that’s as easy as dragging the FM frequency randomly and hoping you hit a station.
So here I was in Meerut, in the guesthouse called Ashiana. My parents were getting ready to move out of Meerut and to Delhi. Being of an age where you are always a hindrance but rarely useful, I had shut myself in my room and had Meteora for company. I had time on my hands, and a patient fascination for English music. Combined with a two-in-one cassette player (so called because it also had transistor radio), I spent no less than four to five hours simply listening to Meteora. One band, one album, four hours. Consider that this wasn’t music meant for me, suggested to me or even relating to me. It was probably meant for a late teen-young adult audience in the States that lived in conditions very different from mine.
But I connected. In those songs, I could relate my own bitterness, pain and sadness. And I could also realise that going through these things meant I was becoming something more. More than any Value Education class or bland sermon, I could feel the words become the theme song for my own angst and sorrow. And also the theme song for what I would like to do to get out of it all. But also the theme song for what I could do and would do. A band I’d never heard of before was singing about my life through a cassette player. And all I had to do was rock to the rhythm and it all related to me, inside my head.
Yes, I had felt Numb, yes I had felt it was Easier to Run. Yes I had felt each line burn and disappear, to be replaced by the next, which burned in turn. Events and developments flashed, along with fantastical ideas. Fantasy and reality were getting mixed up, but the reality of my pain was never lost. Even when I imagined myself in situations that weren’t real, I knew they were reflections of my actual pain and sadness. By thinking and feeling, imagining and jumping about like a madman, I was letting it out and introspecting. I would like to say that this made me a better, more mature individual, but I’m not sure I became that. I only realised my pain in a way that I had not before.
Needless to say, I was hooked to the music. In later years, these songs – and more from LP – became theme songs for various events and situations of my life. I clearly remember, as things went from bad to terrible before the Class X boards, I listened to Numb for hours on end. Even the video, and the characters in it, seemed to relate. Much later, songs like Leave Out All the Rest helped me contemplate what I may leave behind if I had to leave. Others spoke about feelings of betrayal, unfamiliarity and also, sometimes, the will to overcome it all.
But the music evolved. The screams and howls of Meteora were replaced by the more sedate but equally touching lyrics of Minutes to Midnight. Thousand Suns continued this, while the Hybrid theory series brought out the best of meaningful rap. The Hunting Party was different again, but again I could relate.
How did I do this ? In my mind, there was the image of a young boy – about 16 to 18 – take your pick – who was discovering the joys and sorrows of this world, and found that there was more to be sorrowful about. He wasn’t a particularly popular or noticeable person, he did not like to hang out with a lot of people. Yet in his head, it was all so colourful, but also so bitter. It was, in a way, the image of myself in the movie whose theme song was Meteora. For all the change in music, this didn’t change. And so I could relate.
But this year, they’re coming out with music that’s different. For the first time – at least as long as I remember – they’ve got a girl (Kiiara) singing along with them. They’ve got music that speaks of love, instead of the lonely pain they usually spoke of. They speak of strength and strength through bonding, whereas earlier it was more about rejection and backing off. All of this, somehow, confuses the kid in my head. Because that kid had little contact with girls, was an introvert and most of all, used LP to channelise his negative emotions.
But the person who thought it all up has also changed, and at first, it is tempting to just blame that. It is a grand thing to say I’ve become mature, only to prove to myself a thousand times that I haven’t. But somehow that kid isn’t all that is in my head anymore. Over the years, my tastes have mellowed. Whereas I would hungrily gobble down metal bands, I’ve increasingly moved to country, folk and even classical. I can’t explain why, but this music speaks to me too. LP has gradually lost some of its space, and that kid comes out less and less. Instead, other constructs fill my head, enjoying varieties of music which I could never have imagined in my teenage years.
But it’s not enough to say that I’m a different person. Because I still need to channelise pain and rejection. I still cry while covering my face with a pillow, I still feel like taking extreme steps to solve problems and I still am sensitive to efforts to exclude me from various groups. My character, with its flaws, has not been formatted and a new one installed. This is proved when I listen to old LP songs and can still relate. Given the chance, I would again listen for four or five hours to Meteora.
Then do I reject the new LP ? No, I allow myself to channelise pain using different metaphors. The songs still speak of pain, but that – as I have realised – is not purely negative. Amy MacDonald taught me that a girl’s song can be as much about you as about a girl. Feelings of love and affection – even carnal love – can coexist with feelings of bitterness. They don’t have to be antagonistic, they can simply coexist. Because you can hate and love at the same time, and music can express both.
Maybe, then, the kid who was the child of mine and Meteora’s has not only become less relevant, but also changed. Maybe he is not always a bitter kid anymore, but an individual who balances the bitterness with feelings that are positive, without trying to throw one at the other and see which breaks. Maybe he sometimes sings in a girl’s voice without fearing the loss of his manliness, realising that much of what humans go through applies to both genders and at the end of the day, there’s nothing to be had by being male in a predefined stereotype. Maybe he is not one person anymore, but a teenage kid, a more mature man and also a woman, all rolled into one. The person who lives them will probably never know.
This begs the question – how do we really feel and relate to pain ? Each song of the band will give its own answer, bringing out a different type of kid. Perhaps they’re all variants, perhaps they’re avatars moving from one to another. But if there’s one thing that keeps them together – relevant and in my head – it is that they help me express myself in a way I know I could never do on my own.
And that’s why I hope LP never stops singing.