In Rainbows

In Rainbows, Radiohead's latest release (photo taken from amazon.co.uk)

It has been quite windy these two days. Wind speed reached between 22 to 28 miles per hour in general. These numbers didn't make sense until I heard the wind wiping across the streets in a howling roar and until I felt windows cracking and buildings shaking. Yorkshire is notorious for its winter of gales. When I still lived in the university accommodation, the first winter was made up of several sleepless nights of unceasing wind. Hearing it scratching over concrete surface can be quite depressing, as if it is also aiming at the human body seeking to pierce through and to mock the hidden fear.

These winter days fleshed out my imagination about Wuthering Heights, and sent me back to the passionate days when I was just a literature neophyte (a never-changing and constant state, though) and to the burning excitement that I found in that novel. (Some of my current colleagues, however, do find my taste for literature, especially in this case, disagreeable.)

Yesterday I was walking in the wind listening to In Rainbows, Radiohead's new album. Music is never my specialty and I tend to be very forgetful about anything related to music, including the musicians that I have liked or the melodies that I have enjoyed. Music does not usually stay in my mind but only in the ears. I have been listening to this new collection for a week, yet not much emotional response was evoked.

Yesterday during my foot-journey, there was a moment when the bricky wind smashed into my body, the male vocal in the ears took off, flying, against a rising and gradually evaporated melody in the background.

This strange moment of weary conflict was very close and familiar, as if it suddenly transformed into a smell or a touch whose physical presence can hardly be ignored.

A couple of years ago, I used to listen to Radiohead when I drove home on highways after a week's labor of work. Now I remember. The same route, the same vehicle, the same fatigue, and the same dull mind. This week duplicated the last, and the same formula of copying was followed repeated. The saddening melody of the pop rock bellowed within the confined but secure space that finally all belonged to me. The right volume for their music was extremely high. I drove on, the body hung onto the floating but gravitating notes, and the heart gradually learned to beat in a healthy pace again.

The wind and the music, the roaring and the moaning caste me into a zone of twilight. Perhaps, that's where the rainbow is, (well, over-interpretation in this case is the curse of my profession), beyond the toil of the world but before the bliss of another state of mind.