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Heartbeat
JJAMZ
Suicide Pact
2012

♥: FEAR!
In the spirit of all the research I'm doing this week, let's see what the internet has to say about physical responses to feeling FEAR! Symptoms of FEAR! include:
dilated blood vessels, increased muscle tension, sped up breathing patterns...accelerated heartbeat.

"Heartbeat" isn't about how fast your heart goes when you're in a horrifying situation -- or at least, it's not about your own particular experience of it. This song is about the fear of connection. The fear of someone else hearing your heartbeat -- of being close enough to sense that intimate noise, that private fear...caused simply by the closeness. A feedback loop: someone hearing your loud heart as a direct result of them being close enough to hear it.

There are a lot of songs about being scared, and a lot which outright claim OVERCOMING YOUR FEAR as the right path. But you know me -- I never like when someone straight up TELLS you to do something. A mirror held up, a slight shift in a different direction, a little flash of honesty: that has more of an effect than anything. Which is why I like "Heartbeat" so much, lyrically -- it's a bit delusional. A bit the lady doth protest too much ("I haven't loved you in a long long time / So why do I feel this way?"). A bit hesitant, a bit hopeful ("If you break my heart one more time..."). A lot fearful ("Can you hear my heart beat? / Please don't stand so close to me"). And a lot honest.

You can't just overcome a fear of closeness, or of intimacy. It takes time, it takes trust, it takes a lot of work. Slapping on a big grin, looking in the mirror and yelling "YEAH, BUDDY, TODAY"S THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE!" absolutely will not work. A fear of love! -- even harder. And I don't mean a fear of commitment, here, which is often another, deeper fear in disguise. I mean fear of LOVE. Of opening up, of letting yourself feel things that depend on someone else. You will get burned and it will not always be easy, and if you find someone willing to work with you, through all those fears and frets, you will have to admit that you might -- just might -- be better off than you were on your own.

But what I really, really like about this song is that it kind of implies that -- even if this girl is scared as fuck of being with someone, and has been burned, but is maybe-just-maybe considering trying again -- being on your own, or at least being strong on your own, is important. Because even if your heart is all rapid-pulsed and crazy-rhythmed, it's still your heart. The song opens with a little nod to that sense of possessed self: "You were never mine to give away," and ends with our singer's heart, crazy and fearful as it is, still beating strong. And through all the fear, of this that whatever, she came through.

I feel so lucky, every day, that I have found someone to make me realize I don't have to fear the connection & closeness of which I never thought I was capable. But even as I work through and, on occasion, past my fears --- it's pretty important to remember that my heart is still beating strong. Whether it's fear or passion or just having run quickly to catch a bus, it's strong and it's mine, and that makes me a bit less fearful, too.

♥



An unrelated note: this song is being used with the new MySpace promo material, and it actually works because it totally made me sign up. For a completely antiquated website that's rebranding itself as a musical mecca. Whether that happens or not --the fact that I now know this song more than makes my membership worthwhile.