♪♫ ♪ ♪♫

Hourglass
Artist: B L O C K S
Album: N/A
Year: 2010
♥: Routine. Same old. Day in day out. Over and over. I don't think any device used to measure time exemplifies 'routine' better than an hourglass. The same sand cycles, the glass is flipped over and over, boring though visually transfixing -- you get stuck in the cycle, stuck in watching the same thing happen over and over, watching time slip away from you. You're powerless. Things just keep happening the same way and you have no choice but to let them happen, watch the sand slip away.

Or...?

Or, you listen to this song, and you realize something else about hourglasses.

"I filled up an hourglass
To feel the sand slipping through my hands"
Well oh hey there.
Someone fills the hourglass.
Okay, maybe it's a machine on an assembly line -- but if we're metaphor-ing, then who fucking fills the hourglass of our routines? WE DO. Yeah, we have some things we can't control. We have to work, earn money; we have to brush our teeth and shower. But not...really. We do it because we want to be part of society, because not washing means you'll have no friends -- but we could easily choose NOT to. Moreover, we can reevaluate our reasons for doing something, enjoy the moment of doing it, be mindful, maybe: instead of filling up the hourglass and lamenting about the time wasted, we can enjoy the feeling of the sand slipping through our hands. Joy in small things, exemplified.

And if you fill up an hourglass, you can empty it.
I love this song because it plays with the idea of an hourglass being constantly cyclical. "Empty like an hourglass" is not a valid comparison -- hourglasses are generally full, that's the point -- until you stop to think about it from this perspective. You create your routine, you create your world. Every time you continue your routine, you're choosing to continue your routine. That makes you active in your life. Of course, it requires even more action to change your routine -- but routine does not make you powerless. In fact, it should remind you that you are powerFUL.

My favourite line in this song is "I feel a muscle pushing through the past" --- it reminds me, incessantly, that if you're sick of something, you have the strength to change the past. The routine. You make your life, you get stuck in its ruts. You create your routine, you fill your hourglass. You are powerful and you have control, even over something as simple as brushing your teeth. On days when it's hard to get out of bed, this honestly helps me do it.

In more musical news: this song, I LOVE. Someone posted it on Tumblr ages ago, and I was shocked to realize B L O C K S hasn't even released an album -- this is just a little single song making the rounds in the backstreets of the internet. When I had safely downloaded it and the play count started to rise, I had one of those moments of "pull" -- where I felt so grateful to have found this song, because it would've been so easy just to not click 'play' or to have missed the post, and chances are I'd never have found it again. No bouncy chorus, no inspiration, no twirling around to its pulsing, almost childlike rhythm. I would have been less for it. It is one of those songs that JUST MAKES ME HAPPY. ♥
(Ahhh and the lyrics are so perfect for this theme, though, I can't even -- read them!)