Woke up a bit after five in the morning. Mind racing, thinking of unfinished tasks at work, trivial ones, but when you’re half asleep, you don’t have the sense to convince yourself of that until you’re more awake.

Installed Micro.blog for macOS again. Discovered Grammarly stopped working outside of Safari again. Reinstalled. Meanwhile, I saw my feed on Micro.blog, where @javbel said, “Two things about this”. It’s a nice cover for Mad World, so I felt like listening to Mad World. An hour later, my browser tabs look like this, by order:

  1. The Curious Meaning of ‘Mad World’ by Tears for Fears.
  2. Tears for Fears - Mad World | The Story Behind The Song.
  3. Wikipedia: Tears for Fears,
  4. Wikipedia: Mad World.
  5. Wikipedia: Bath, Somerset.
  6. Wikipedia: The Primal Scream.
  7. YouTube Music: Mad World (TFF version).
  8. YouTube Music: Mad World (Garry Jules version, AKA the Donnie Darko version).
  9. Reddit: Which Mad World do you prefer: Tears for Fears or Gary Jules?

Did you know Mad World was originally written by then-unemployed 19-year-old Roland Orzabal (Tears for Fears) while his girlfriend worked three jobs so he could stay home and look outside the window playing around with his guitar? He watched people going to work from above and came up with the lyrics (see link 2 above).

Such a dark powerful song, influenced by primal therapy (that link I opened just now) nevertheless, about lack of feelings on one hand and feelings about death on the other, and Orzabal had no idea. Listening to the TFF version, I believe it: it’s punchy, upbeat even.

Garry Jules, on the other hand, who did a more true-to-form (or true to lyrics?) version a couple of years later, performs the perfect version for Donnie Darko and what I believe is the song’s true meaning.

How can a 19-year-old teenager who doesn’t need to work for a living create something so different than what he is at that time? Can we experience feelings that are completely disconnected from our daily experiences (…." daily expiii-riences…." in a Mad World tune, as playing in my head right now)?

It’s possible that at the time, Orzabal had some suppressed feelings (if to go by the theme of the book), and those did come up in the song, but listening to the song he created with Curt Smith (who ended up singing it), I don’t believe it. He wrote about what he saw and read, letting his creativity take over. Then the song was out as its own entity, something separate from its creator, like a child born to parents, and they are alike but also different than the parent.

The feelings we express are entities in themselves, based on our experience, but do not reflect them completely. I find the whole thing funny but also kinda sad. Time to go to try to sleep again.