Twenty-Five Apples

Every once in a while, my mind will sink its teeth into something kind of silly and refuse to let go of it. It's both frustrating and cool at the same time. Last night it was this lyric from one of the songs on Kate Pierson's solo album. I can't recall what track it is off the top of my head, but the lyric talks about being "split like an apple thrown against the wall".

Now... if an apple is thrown against a wall so hard that it splits, that's a pretty sad state of affairs for the apple. It's now a sad puddle of goo. It will never nourish anyone. It will never become pie or apple cider. It will never grow into a tree. Except the chord structure and melody pattern attached to that particular lyric is actually really bright and transcendent -- not sad at all. It makes it sound like the apple was somehow stronger than the wall even though it split from the impact.

So while I was falling asleep last night, my mind got its fangs into that little thing from that one song I'd listened to earlier in the day. And I kept dreaming about this apple and all the possible things that might have happened to it when it hit the wall. In one scenario, a bird of paradise made out of purple light came out of the apple and flew away. In another, the apple made the wall and the building attached to it crumble into dust because it refused to split at all. There must have been twenty-five different dreams and twenty-five different amazing things that happened to the apple.

I've had people tell me that I over-think things a lot. I can hear those people going "Jesus Christ, it's just a song". On my bad days, I agree with those people and wish I was different. But on my good days, I just feel sorry for them. Like... really sorry. I got to see all those magical apples conquer a wall last night and they didn't, so who's the real winner here?