As I sit in my loft, perusing through my large quantities of movie soundtracks, I can't help but to think of all the great instrumentals that always get me. Those iconic melodies that every time you hear them, you get this tingly feeling inside. The one song that always gets me though is Joe Hisashi's Spirited Away medley. Through my thousands and thousands of MP3's, I always come back to this one song. Ever since I watched Spirited Away for the first time five years ago, that piano medley at 1:25 just casts a weird spell on me.

*WARNING: Imma blabber on for a bit about this on why i think this is so (thats what Xangas for isnt it?*

My guess of why this soundtrack affects me so. When I first watched this movie, I was going through an interesting part of my life. It was the summer before college started and I was living in Costa Mesa with my brother. I had never lived anywhere else other than my comfy neighborhood in Cerritos and my life had been pretty standard. But a few weeks before high school ended my parents decided to move to Las Vegas, leaving me homeless in California or at least it felt that way. So my mindset back then was, no home, no parents, friends faraway, about to start brand new life in San Diego making a whole new group of people, and wondering whether or not I'd be able to handle it. Then I watched this movie and the story just stuck with me.
For those of you who don't know, the general synopsis is a little girl has to move to a new town because her parents made her. While exploring the new town, her family discovers an abandoned theme park and through a series of events she is separated from her parents. Even worse she stumbles into a strange spirit world with creatures as strange as strange can be. You'd think under the circumstances (new home, no parents, weird monsters) she'd be scared shitless but that isn't the case. She accepts the world with optimism and determination and just powers through until the end when she is reunited with her parents.
Just how she handled the situation inspired me. That just because you don't understand something or are unfamiliar doesn't mean you should be afraid. Just because a monster looks huge, dangerous, and disgusting doesn't mean it's always out to hurt you. Being the person that I am, I took these analogies, stretched and reshaped them, and applied them to reality. Kinda helps me with my optimistic thinking and belief that somehow in the end as long as you accept the unknown and don't let fear consume you, you have a pretty good shot of things turning out well. OH another great thing about this movie is how she doesn't discriminate against the masked monster while everyone else does. I guess its been done, the whole children aren't inherently discriminatory but rather it develops through social convention, but using monsters and magical crap makes it stick to me more =) So connecting this to my life, I paralleled the story of Spirited Away to what I was going through at the time and it gave me the positive mentality and childlike objectivity to get through unknown trials the past four years have given me. Plus the animation is beautiful, the world just plays with your imagination, and I'm a sucker for self-discovery movies.
*end blabberment*

I apologize to those of you who read this, it turned out longer and more convoluted than I imagined, but yeah thats what comes to mind every time I hear this song.

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=EBC8D7E177F26648

we seriously need to get the rest of our stuff from Mr. Z's computer

yay its done! 

April 9th, 2006

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Final Fantasy VII Advent Children....that was so exhilirating...wow...