Title: Billy Joel - The Stranger Source:
YouTube URL Source:[None] Published:Mar 29, 2011 Author:Billy Joel Post Date:2011-03-29 18:13:01 by CZ82 Keywords:None Views:18512 Comments:24
That's cool. Not everyone has the same take on music. I like edgy too, but I have to do it in small doses. In the same way I have to do major metropolitan areas.
I would rather sit in the forest listening to and observing the nuances of everything around me patiently than to go to a night club or listen to something with a bite to it too long.
I tried to watch 'Natural Born Killers,' the movie that is a cultural statement about how media feeds into promoting bloody crime and I had to do it the first time in small doses in a three day period.
I would get odor memories of the Panama conflict of pools of blood from a person that had bled out, and remember how the red corpuscles layered on top of the yellowish plasma and would crack and curdle. Or hear again the buzz of the business of flies that attracts in a tropical area.
Music does the same to me. Eminem is a horrible experience to listen too. And I can listen to a song or two of heavy metal, then have to move on from that to aggravate a spell.
I would get odor memories of the Panama conflict of pools of blood from a person that had bled out, and remember how the red corpuscles layered on top of the yellowish plasma and would crack and curdle.
I am very curious about your history here.
I get oder memories too, but given your post I suspect that your's were the result of a lot more trauma.
I saw the scene of the panic killing of a van full of people taking a woman to the hospital to have a baby. The vehicle had the flag of truce on it's antenna and came to a check point too fast for the edgy NCO to take. The E-5 got his man on a squad gun to open up and only her Mom survived.
When you see bodies in the initial Rigor mortis with their body's blood emptied from them you first think how much more blood a body has than you thought. And it isn't a red liquid puddle like it was a movie. It is a very nasty thing.
And to see a woman's body where you can see parts of a baby and fluids from the womb exposed and the film of death in their eyes, you never forget it.
War is a horrible turmoil of stress, chaos, anger and fear anyway. Mix that with training to react fast to situations and screamed orders with the odors, sounds and explosive sounds that make you feel think they beat against you like a drum, war is an insanity where time changes speed and you are later amazed how aggressive and intense you felt when you reflect on it afterward.
I would say that I am more edgy a person to put in a dangerous situation now than I was before I went down there.
I have trouble articulating the experience exactly. But I can say one thing for sure, I never want another war experience, but ironically, I could definitely handle it far better if I get in another one.
You do get desensitized to it, and I'd have no problem killing someone without hesitation if I felt that level of threatened aggressiveness again. Which is not a good thing, but then again is a plus if I ever had to deal with adversity again.
I have. In fact, people into that sort of preditorial combat cannot be talked to without creating danger to you if you are in the same unit.
I remember hearing stories from some of the Viet vets when I was a private in 1977 in the unit arms room that disgusted and alarmed me. I have always been quick with an opinion, (I know this comes as a surprise to you) and I reacted to talk of "teaching gooks a lesson" to stating that if I ever saw someone doing things like this I would take them into custody if I could or at worse write them up.
The reaction was a bad one. It gave me the same feeling like one would get in the wrong part of L.A. if you walked up to some street dealers and started lecturing them and talking about getting people busted.
I was told they would be watching me -- in not a good way -- if we went to war. In fact, I'm sure that was part of the mix that precipitated the attempt to bust me with an Article 15 I took to Special Court Martial and won.
The best part of winning besides getting vindicated was escaping those people and going to a new unit. I would never lecture people like that again. And if I saw what they talked about doing happening in combat, I would make damn sure I was in a safe place and could protect my back before I would talk about it. If I would do so at all.
