Last week I mentioned there was a particularly great line in High Fidelity I wanted to explore.
Bec, in her comment on that post, was on the same wave length, beating me to my follow-up post! (Just trying to squeeze two blogs out of one book :) )
The line involves Rob’s musings about how people whose lives are closely bound by music (or other forms of emotive storytelling) can end up with a skewed view of the world, particularly when it comes to relationships:
Maybe we all live life at too high a pitch, those of us who absorb emotional things all day, and as a consequence we can never feel merely content: we have to be unhappy, or ecstatically, head-over-heels happy, and those states are difficult to achieve within a stable, solid relationship.
Is that true?
Do great stories skew the way you see the world and live your life?
Whether it’s because you’ve read too many romances and no partner can ever measure up, or one too many crime novels, and you live in a constant state of fear, or one too many downbeat literary novels, and you feel there’s no hope to ever find happiness because the world is so flawed?
I know the books I read can colour my mood for hours, even days, afterwards (rarely more than that, unless I’ve deeply connected with the story), but I think my reading material is so eclectic that I’m generally not overwhelmed by one particular emotional theme.
I have a tendency to over-analyse most things, and I tend to experience emotions in their extremes, but I don’t think that’s because of my reading material, but more something in my own personality (or was it created from absorbing so much emotional material vicariously, in addition to my own emotional reality?)
OK, I’m going to stop now, before I hurt myself with over-analysis…
Anyone else given much thought to this topic?
Bec, in her comment on that post, was on the same wave length, beating me to my follow-up post! (Just trying to squeeze two blogs out of one book :) )
The line involves Rob’s musings about how people whose lives are closely bound by music (or other forms of emotive storytelling) can end up with a skewed view of the world, particularly when it comes to relationships:
Maybe we all live life at too high a pitch, those of us who absorb emotional things all day, and as a consequence we can never feel merely content: we have to be unhappy, or ecstatically, head-over-heels happy, and those states are difficult to achieve within a stable, solid relationship.
Is that true?
Do great stories skew the way you see the world and live your life?
Whether it’s because you’ve read too many romances and no partner can ever measure up, or one too many crime novels, and you live in a constant state of fear, or one too many downbeat literary novels, and you feel there’s no hope to ever find happiness because the world is so flawed?
I know the books I read can colour my mood for hours, even days, afterwards (rarely more than that, unless I’ve deeply connected with the story), but I think my reading material is so eclectic that I’m generally not overwhelmed by one particular emotional theme.
I have a tendency to over-analyse most things, and I tend to experience emotions in their extremes, but I don’t think that’s because of my reading material, but more something in my own personality (or was it created from absorbing so much emotional material vicariously, in addition to my own emotional reality?)
OK, I’m going to stop now, before I hurt myself with over-analysis…
Anyone else given much thought to this topic?
