Emotional impacts from unexpected places.

Zayl

Just as the title entails. Have you ever read, heard, or just plain witnessed something that affected you in a profound way, out of left field? I know I share a lot of metal on here, but to me this hit me in an entirely different way. For reference "norns" in norse mythology were three beings that represented time. Urd, the past. Verdandi/Belldandy, the present. And Skuld, the future. Even the gods themselves fear the Norns, as after all, nothing lasts forever, and time ends all things eventually. Now I myself was brought up not to suppress my emotions, but I was taught it was inappropriate to show them, male conditioning as it were. Yet the lyrics in this song, and the way the song itself is played shows beautifully the torrent of raw emotion I myself feel at times, despite my not showing it outwardly. The screaming at 2:53 to 3:10 in the song is particularly heartrending to me, even the guitars themselves sound as if they were weeping. To me this song displays how someone like myself might finally outwardly express emotion when I am broken.

I feel a chill in my heart
Like lingering winter cold
I and my son are torn apart
He was just 6 winters old

My first-born was he
And the last of my kin
The last one to carry my name
Death smiled at him its deadly grin
There is no one for me to blame

The fate of Norns await us all
There is no way to escape
The day to answer Oden's call
Or walk through hel's gate

I carry him to my ship
He seems to be asleep
But the deep blue colour of his lips
Is enough to make me weep

No man should have to bury his child
Yet this has been my share
The tears i shed run bitter and wild
It's a heavy burden to bear

His body feels so light in my arms
His skin is pale as snow
Yet his weight feels heavy in my heart
As my sadness continues to grow

Allfather!
What fate has been given me?
Why must I suffer?
Why must I feel this pain?
Allfather!
LIfe has lost it's meaning to me
I think I'm going insane!

I lay him down on a pyre
A burial worthy a king
And as I lie down by his side
I hear the weaving norns sing

The fate of Norns await us all
There is no way to escape
The day to answer Oden's call
Or walk through hel's gate

The fate of Norns await us all
I know this to be true
It's time to answer Odens's call
My son, he calls for me and you

So go ahead and share. Something that hit you deep from someplace you were not expecting it from at all. These unexpected encounters I believe show us our true selves.

ThailandTom

You remind me of a few friends I had back in the UK, my first circle of friends growing up through my early teens. They use to listen to all kinds og metal bands, I forget them now, but I remember 'down' and of course metallica.

I have had (like probably most people), been totally blindsided by something and ended up crying for no reason. The movie vanila sky made me cry for some reason at the end, the one movie to actually ever make me cry and it isn't that sad as far as sad endings can go.

There also was a time when I was 5 years old sitting in the garden watching a moth type creature, it may have been a butterfly I don't know. Anyway a bee or wasp came along and they started to fight and the moth type creature ended up dying. That made me burst into tears, I remember that pretty well considering I was 5.

RichardH

My wife and I went to a see film version of Steinbeck's "Of mice and men".... the one with Gary Sinise...it was maybe fifteen years ago. I had never read the book, and the ending took me completely by surprise. After the credits I sat in the theater for about twenty minutes trying to compose myself, but left the still really disturbed.

On a more profound level. When I was a kid I was walking from my apartment block to the corner store, and saw another kid who was playing at the curb get hit by a Volkswagen, then get pinned under the front wheel . He wad dead. His mother came screaming out of a ground floor apartment and went completely out of her mind. That memory came up over and over again thirty years later in psychotherapy.