Pause

Play.

"One thing about music is when it hits you, you feel no pain."

Pause!

Bullsh*t.

Then how do you explain that gut-wrenching feeling that I have every time I hear someone singing along to a SouljaBoy track?

Rewind.

I'm sure everyone has at least one song, that if played will reconnect them to a memory in their life and instantly evoke an ancient emotion. It's like pressing play on paused feelings. That's what makes good music great. The ability to emotionally connect people that have never met. The reason music can cross boundaries of gender, race, religion, status, and geographical demographics is because in it's simplest form it holds the few universal truths that everyone has experienced.

Happiness, sadness, anger, pain, love.
That's how you connect to millions. Relate on the most natural of conditions.

Pause.

Sidenote:
You know, our hearts don't actually look like those cookie-cutter shapes that we're used to that slightly resembles a pair of lips, or breasts, or an ass, or whatever Freudian-esk Rorschach response you see. Our hearts actually look more like a fist... wearing headphones. So while the Jersey Shore steadily fist pumps its way through the caving behind my ribs, I am reminded daily that music is what drives me.

Fast forward.

And how do you explain that emphatic joy that I experience every time Eminem starts yelling on a song and instantly dwarfs his peers?

Pause.

Now I know you might be saying, "That's different. That's happiness, not pain."
But isn't it those that make us those most happy that are able to put us through the most misery?
No?
Rewind to the second to last person that you fell in love with and then fast forward to the feelings you felt when they first broke your heart.

Pause.

How does it feel?

You see, love is giving someone everything they need to hurt you, but having faith that they won’t.
So when you say, "Oh my god, I love Beyoncé!" What you're really saying is, "I've invested my time, money and energy into this person who so far has lived up to their end of the bargain by delivering something that I thoroughly enjoy. But the minute she delivers a lackluster album, or considering your level of love for her... two lackluster albums, you're going to pack your bags, chuck up the deuce, and bounce with that 'don't call me, don't text me, stop trying to reach me through your videos on youtube' attitude."

Fast forward.

So, you see, if music can give you the highest of highs, then obviously it can deliver the lowest of lows. That's just the laws of nature. Like any child with a Lego set, you build things up to knock them down to build them up again. It's instinctual.

Rewind.

This started about music and pain.

Play.

"Hop up out my b..."

Skip!

Did that hurt you like it hurt me?
Anyway... Getting back on track. I guess my point of this is for everyone to remember, the next time they're rhythmically writhing with someone over the earth-shattering rumble of the bass and ear-ringing hiss of the tweeters... remember that the song that right now makes you yell, "That's my sh*t!" may one day cause you to say, "Turn that sh*t off!" All because of the melodic structure full of strategic chords and reflected reverberations that now resonates with a void in your heart that was created the day you chose to forget the words to your favorite song.

If that's not pain, I don't know what is.

Stop.


Live, love & learn!
-The King

Love Is A Unicorn

How can anyone find real love?
Such a seemingly impossible search. We might as well be looking for unicorns.

How can we expect anyone living in this day and age to truly find love? Or even know it when they see it?
What does it even look like? What does the product of a single-parent home think of the possibilities of finding a mate to love for the rest of their life?

I'm not talking about that mother-to-son, brother-to-brother, 'hey... I might not always like you, but I'll always love you', I didn't chose to have you in my life but I'd rather die than lose you from it kind of love.

No.

And I'm not talking about that bff, known you since I was two, best friends for as long as you don't piss me off, I'll cry on your shoulder every time I don't find the love I'm actually talking about kind of love.

Nope. Not that either.

I'm talking about that 'in sickness and in health', hold your hands even when they're ashy, look into your eyes and know everything you're saying, kiss you with morning breath, rub your feet even though I've been walking all day, willing to watch you age... even though I know that it means that you will slowly go from my type go 'My God, you look old'.

That's the kind of love that I've never seen.
That's the kind of love that I've been told my whole life is the truest pleasure in life.

We're raised on stories of adolescent characters going to desperate lengths to get the attention of the potential love of their life. But, why do fairy tales always end when the actual relationship starts?

What does "happily ever after" really mean? Maybe it's "happily even after." As in, living happily, even after falling victim to the 41% divorce rate. Living happily, even after losing your best friend and putting little Jasmin or Jamal through the perpetuating stress of watching their parents fall out of endless love.

These stories, just like life, don't give any real insight as to what you're supposed to do if you really do find love. In hindsight, it's about as frustrating as being a young man and realizing that sex ed is not going to teach you how to make your woman orgasm.
Shoot, that might even help love last.

But no. We are left to build the image of love in our imaginations. And doomed to scrutinize everyone who doesn't live out our fantasies; completely disregarding the fact that they are just trying to live out their own.

I've fallen victim to this cycle. I've been the hunter and the prey. I am the lost lover who has advice for everyone but myself. I am that product of a single-parent home who's just trying to find what he's never seen. Trying to be the example that I never had. Trying to start my fairy tale where the others end.

Somehow I still have faith in the mystical, magical, practically unknown for this millennium thing that is true love. I don't believe in elves, fairies, wizards, or trolls. But I do believe in God. And if God is love... and I'm created in his image... I have to be able to find my reflection. Even if I've never seen it before.

So while everyone else is stumbling around the emotional Sleepy Hollow with a heart full of hope and no clear head on their shoulders...
I'll be hunting unicorn.


Live, learn & love!
- The King