Dark Nightwish of the Soul

Brain fail recovery isn’t easy. My crash happened in later 2004, and I was able to hide it from everyone for a long time. Eventually it became impossible to hide it and my life fell apart, but how to reveal what I’d hidden? For me it all started two years ago with this YouTube video.

My brother has idolized a Finnish symphonic metal band called Nightwish for some time and periodically sends me links to their videos and information, and over the summer loaned me their tour documentary and the movie they made. This is the latest promotional trailer uploaded on YouTube just today.

I’m personally not that familiar with Nightwish, so I was expecting a basic rock opera. I had no idea what the story would be about because I didn’t watch any promos first. What I didn’t expect was to be stripped of my walls and barriers and carried through a soul cleansing to the other side of madness and back. It’s hard to explain to someone casually walking through the room (and I’ve got the headphones on, so they can’t hear it) why I’m hugging my laptop to my face and weeping all over my keyboard and can’t put it down. More shocking is that I’m the last person you’d expect to catch like that.

This comes from the interview directly below.

“The dramatic arc ranges from utterly delicate to most majestic and brutal. To combine those elements so that they’d support each other was a challenge- but it was also our aim.”

My first blog publication featuring a Nightwish Song was August of 2012 at spaz: walking in the air. I generally don’t get that honest, but I’m learning that brutal honesty is crucial to emotional survival. This movie got waaaaay more honest than that blog post, and the story execution was perfect. I felt like I was racing time along with the characters I was watching, and I knew from my own experiences what it felt like to be each of the characters- lost, alone, abandoned, angry, aching, afraid.

Secrets are the blades that whisper through our hearts. They help us keep our worlds intact, but they can make us lose focus of the people we keep the secrets from. Secrets may keep our loved ones safe, or protect us from pain, but they can create a coldness and sometimes a sadness that can never heal if the secret isn’t learned. Secrets withheld between a parent and child can damage in ways the secret revealed never could. Why we keep the secrets is its own mystery. I know the pain of a parent taking secrets to the grave, but I also know the depths of which I’d dare to keep a few secrets from my own child for her protection. We keep secrets out of love, maybe, and yet feel less loved when a secret is in the way.

Imaginaerum was heartwrenching and utterly brilliant, but don’t click that link if you don’t want spoilers. I went into it cold and was wonderfully devastated. On a very dark level I found it as magical as Narnia or Willy Wonka. I especially loved the symbolism translating through a broken mind, and the feeling of bewildering urgency. At the same time, the story was very real and down to earth, a common story to many, told in a way that kept my attention glued to my monitor.

Learn more about Nighwish at Nightwish – Wikipedia.
Visit the official website at Nightwish where you can check on concert tour dates, order merchandise, and link to news articles and updates.
See their official YouTube channel at Nightwish – YouTube.
Put Nightwish in your Google+ circles at Nightwish – Google+.
Like the Nightwish Facebook page at Nightwish – Facebook. Posted today- “Only three weeks left, until the release of the NIGHTWISH live / tour documentary DVD »Showtime, Storytime« – out on November 29th.”

Notes:

The title of this post is a play on the original 16th century book Dark Night of the Soul: St. John of the Cross. Amusingly, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams is one of my all-time top favorite books.

After unimaginable sadness, joy does come, but only when we’re ready to let go.