"Isn't it good Norwegian wood?"

I started listening to The Beatles properly a few years ago only after reading Murakami’s Norwegian Wood. The book remains one of my favourites even today. But it’s the kind of favourite I don’t keep returning to, because it takes me to a place I’d rather not be in (or have emerged from). As a consequence, I’ve also never been able to listen to the song “Norwegian Wood” after I heard it the first time and felt myself violently slip into that void. Until this morning, when it played on shuffle, and I did not Skip.

I wonder what has changed, for the emotional intensity and darkness of the book has definitely remained intact for me. I vividly remember staying up all night and practically inhaling the book. Then, heading for class (it was a part of the “Asian Novel” paper), and flatly refusing to share my thoughts because I was so deeply moved. Somehow, talking about it seemed as though it would tarnish my experience. Not to mention, I find it difficult to open up about things I feel strongly about. Of course, it changes with time, and eventually I do share (hence this post). Yet, that may not always fade the experience itself.

Even now, I haven’t forgotten how my stomach clenched, and I felt as overwhelmed as the lost Toru was every time the song came on. I can still feel the ethereal Naoko slipping through my fingers with every page I turned. And I can clearly picture the eye of the storm that Midori was… And I remember a hundred other fragments that will forever stay with me, and skew how I see this world, whether I realize it or not. Perhaps the picture is forever changing, adapting, and rearranging itself. Or, it’s the other way round. Maybe, it’s both. What I know for sure is that we have a relationship with art which, much like that with people, is forever evolving. And it’s not just for us: it’s the same for the creator too. Think Eddie Vedder’s “Alive”. A fragment shifts somewhere, the light glints off another angle, and the duck becomes a rabbit.

This time, right now, a new picture allows me to access to another beautiful dimension to a song. And just like that, in its own magical and inexplicable way, the world will never be the same again, because such little things are that powerful. I wonder what the next shift will bring. But for now, I will listen to the song again for the I’ve-lost-trackth time. Simply because I can.