Blog no. 27: When the sun goes down

Dear people,

  It's just people this time, since I don't believe that "music" people exist. I refuse to believe that there are people who don't enjoy music; everyone likes music, it doesn't matter how shitty I think your taste is. Whether you enjoy some ultra complex progressive band with percussion, harmonica, saxophone and whatever the guy on cocaine figured would blend well together with his crummy guitar, or just some dude smashing the bongos at the corner of the convenient store for some spare change, you enjoy music, period.
 So, rant about music listeners aside, I went to a concert a couple of days ago. After paying a small fortune for my cheap ass to get the precious Arctic Monkeys ticket, and misremembering when it was taking place a month ago because I'm a fucking idiot, the day finaly arrived on the 6th of July, NOT on the 6th of June as some good people might have thought. I stocked up with some sandwiches and cheap wine which I was definitely not expecting to get through security, and after suffering a small heart-attack due to thinking I forgot my ticket at home, a couple of friends and I arrivd to the venue: a glorified grass field which, admittedly, felt a lot like a hippie festival.  We sat for a couple of hours while the supporting bands were playing in order to be ready for the tall task that was ahead of us: standing up for the rest of the concert.

  The wine I brought wasn't half bad, and the sandwiches I brought were, well, edible, so we munched through them quickly and listened to the "way better than expected" bands that would typically just be filler before the main concert, but were actually pretty damn good. When Miles Kane showed up on stage everyone stood up as if the pope was in the house, as a sign that the big names were starting to arrive. The dude was quite good, felt like listening to an 80's rockstar with modern influences, and of course, he was dressed appropriately, with a colourful flowery shirt and an equally flowery bandana. Everyone was really getting into the show while I was admiring the multitude of weird facial expressions his female drummer was pulling off and thinking about how freakishly long her tongue was. After his explosive hour-long set, and a small break inbetween, the next big name arrived:Alt-J.
  I hadn't listened to a lot of their songs before but what I listened to I liked, so I was pretty excited to see them live. The fact that their set was played out during the sunset might have skewed my enjoyment to their show, since I'm a sucker for sunsets, but damn were they good. Everyone was on their feet enoying the weird and oftentimes eerie sounds of the band. Occasionally, some cute girl that is actually a fan of them would hop on some dude's shoulders, and sing along to the unintelligible-to-human-ears lyrics while making a sign that could easily be mistaken for the Illuminati sign - heck, they both look like triangles to me. However much I wanted to listen to "When the sun goes down" when, well, the sun was going down, the moment they started playing "Taro", a song which even I and many other non-fans knew, the crowd went wild. I closed my eyes for a bit to take in the moment, because I realized I was gonna remember that one for a long time. The bass echoing through the speakers shook the ground so much it spread through my whole body, and I wasn't sure if my heart was doing its own thing or just following the rhythm: I could feel every vibration so clearly, I thought that even if I was deaf I'd be able to feel it. I turned around to see how much of the park had filled by that point, and the answer was all of it. Some people were singing, some people were dancing, a lot of them were recording non-stop with their shitty phone cameras, but all of them seemed to be having a good time, and that's when I realized why people go to all this trouble to see their favourite band live. It doesn't matter how good they actually are, the mere energy you get from being around fellow fans is enough for you to declare that money was indeed well spent.

  The Monkeys were great of course, and I'm so happy I got to see them live, but I wouldn't say that it was the highlight of my day. It's like Victoria's theory from HIMYM, that the moment that leads up to the kiss is the moment to cherish, not the actual kiss. That being said, the kiss was freaking good. Thrashing around during "Brianstorm", holding up our phones and accidentally taking a picture of the crowd during "Star Treatment", listening to high-pitched screaming when Alex Turner took his sleeveless jacket off and shook it around enough for its concentrated sweat to shoot in the crowd's direction, seeing the guy brush his hair every so often and "losing his train of thought" as if the bag of acid he had taken before the show just kicked in, all of that is part of the experience that contributed to making this an unforgettable night.
  To sum up: decent experience, a 4/5 from me.

Your friendly concert-goer,
Stelios Zesiades.

Blog no. 26: Blistered

Dear nostalgia addicts,

  Watching the sequel to Trainspotting a few weeks ago, I saw the now middle-aged characters latching to their previous lives and repeating mistakes of the past without missing a beat. I mean, seeing as they all were drugged up in their early twenties, their future was already looking grim. It's a miracle they all survived well into their fourties if you ask me, but it was sad that even though they tried to escape their past it just wasn't a choice for them, as is the case for a lot of people. Like how you get black-out drunk for the hundredth time, even though you promised to yourself you wouldn't drink again after your previous shenanigans, or how you decide to take out that tray out of the oven without using oven mitts, even though you've burned yourself the previous twenty times you've attempted this, as if this time you're freaking Elsa and your hand is magically immune to heat. Point is that sometimes even though we know we're making a mistake, we still do it because we feel the need to, and that's okay. Eventually our gag reflexes will reject alcohol, one hard liquor at a time, and our hands will be too blistered to even attempt cooking in the oven. Ι, for one, am fond of all those drunken memories (or lack thereof), and I can probably explain every scar I have with a cool story. By pure coincidence, those two usually go together. Who would have guessed  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  I once read somewhere that "it's funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different", more or less anyways. Looking back at four, five years ago is like entering a time capsule to a completely different time, with different people around you, different concerns, different tastes. Reading my diary entries from a few years back I realized how much different I was back then, and it baffled me because I didn't even realize it. Mind, me, I've only written a couple of entries since then, but those two are enough to give me an idea of who I was back then. I often find myself reminiscing about those times, much like Renton, Spud and Sick Boy did when "Lust for life" came on in the movie, not in a "life was so much better back then" kind of way, but rather because you've revisited those memories so many times, they've become familiar to you. And no matter how good your memory is, it's not like you're a reliable narrator of your own story, we tend to overexaggerate our memories to fit our narrative, and we tend to make them far better than they actually were. That's why we often revisit our failed relationships for another go, even though we know that the tray is hot, we still wanna touch it.

  Even in the off chance that our memories are actually as amazing as we think they are, there's still no point in feeling down that you're not reliving them, you should just be glad that you've actually lived them. Memory is a helluva drug, it drags you around and slaps you with waves of nostalgia, and it makes you reminisce about times that can't be replicated. All you can do is strive to make your days memorable and let go of the past. The sooner you do that, the carefree-er you'll be. It's a word, alright? 

"I wish there was a way to know that you're in the good old days before you've actually left them." - The Office

Your fellow memory latcher, 

Stelios Zesiades. 

About a cloud - pt. 1

Introduction

  You know that feeling when you think you’ve done everything right but you somehow still manage to fuck up? I mean, you have everything you wanted, friends, family, a girlfriend, a couple of dogs, and all of a sudden BAM. A car hits you on your way to the supermarket. No? Well I do, unfortunately.
   I must admit that it’s not a very pleasant situation to be in, but being dead does have its benefits. For starters you can’t die again, which is kinda neat. I can’t go through walls or anything worthy the attention of Murray and Co. but I can dο other stuff, I think. To be completely honest I still haven't found out what exactly I can do in this limbo-like reality I'm living right now, but I'm a fast learner so I'll figure it out. I like the one where I flicker the light for just a second so people are not sure whether it really flickered or they just blinked, it messes them up real good. That is my favorite past-time now that I’m eh, well, dead, y’know. Don’t judge me, it’s not like there’s a lot of stuff to do in the afterlife.
  But! This is not my story; I’m merely narrating it. This is a story of something much bigger than me, much more interesting and frankly, much more alive. This is a story about something that even though is seemingly insignificant, it’s actually of great importance. This is a story about a cloud.
  This is gonna be really long and weird, and I'm not gonna make it any shorter, so just try to keep up alright? To make it easier for you, I'll just break it off in 3 parts. The first one is the part where I die. Think of it as a How I met your mother situation, but instead of meeting your mother, I die. And no, it wasn't some idiot driver who got distracted talking on the phone, I was just jaywalking and, well, reading some funny post on Reddit. Hey at least the dude that made it can say that he literally made someome die from laughter, if that's any consolation whatsoever. Dying is all morbid and whatever but trust me, there's worse things that can happen to you. You could get expelled, for one.

  Yeah yeah, we all hate spoilers, I know, but the me dying part is actually the least important part of the story. I told you, this isn't a story about me, but since this part is integral to the events that occur afterwards I can't really brush it aside either. Anyways, to sum up, I was on my way home from the grocery store, on my phone, wearing headphones and crossing the road. Relatively new driver is cruising at a normal speed, perfectly in line with the rules and stuff, but she doesn't have time to react to the idiot crossing the road. She tries to swerve but it's too late; my face smashes on the windshield at first before my whole body is sent flying quite a few meters away. I die almost instantly, and that's that. And that thing they say about your life flashing I front of your eyes before you die? Well, either it's bullshit, or mine was just directed by some french new wave jackass experimenting with a still black frame, which is what I actually saw. If I see the big guy at any point, I'm asking for a refund.
  Now that I think of it, the actual dying part isn't even that relevant to the story, damn, I should probably change the name of the first part. Let's see: "The part where I ramble on for a third of the story". Nah, too tongue-in-cheek. "The one with all the exposition." Accurate, but it makes me sound like an awful story-teller, dontcha think? How about we name it something like, uh, "The part before I die." Yeah, that's a bit more accurate I'd say.
 I actually have to go way way back to give you some context otherwise it's gonna be a shitty story, and this is not something I'd like to fuck up. One would think that after dying you'd just seize to exist peacefully, like your soul rests and all your memories are gone or whatever, but I guess the universe has greater plans for some of us. I don't even really believe in god, or reincarnation, or life after death for that matter, but now I don't even know what or who to believe in anymore. In a totally unrelated matter, I really like squirrels.
  Since that's out of the way, now I can get to the real story. You know, the stuff that is actually important to the plot. To do that though I have to go all the way back, back to the day when Chris and I got adopted. Didn't expect that did ya? Well anyways, you ready? Here goes...

Nothing good happens after 2:00 am

I started rewatching How I met your mother the other day. At its best it's a brilliant show, not because of its comedic value, but because of the interesting way it treats concepts that are known to us but are left unexplored. At its worse it's a pile of crap that drags a single wedding to a whole season and then tears any character development of its last seasons to shreds, but that's another story.
  Last night I watched an episode called "Nothing good happens after 2:00 am" and it kept me thinking, how the hell did they come up with something so specific? It's such an arbitrary number that I fail to understand how such a rule can apply, plenty of good has happened both before and after 2:00 am. Then it hit me: it's not about the actual time is it? There's certain thresholds in which that rule applies, not because of its 2:00 am-ness, but rather because of the idea that there actually is such a threshold that makes us make all the bad decisions. Be it in the am's or the pm's, it's the point in time in which we're most vulnerable, a point where we seize any rational thinking and we let our insticts take over. Not the kind of instict that helps us survive from a bear attack or something, it's the kind of instict that makes you drunk text your ex after a night of partying, or the kind of instict that tells you that it's a good idea to eat that leftover pizza from last week's house party you hosted, or the kind of instict that makes you tell Robin you've broken up with Victoria when in fact you haven't, just to get a head start in your soon-to-be relationship. It's the kind of instinct that makes you drink your third post-midnight coffee in hope that you're gonna cover a semester's worth of knowledge in one miserable night. And trust me, in that context I can definitely agree: Nothing good ever happens after 2:00 am, it's just that my 2:00 am is probably different than yours. Besides, it's always after 2:00 am somewhere, technically.
  So take it from me, or take it from Ted's ma, "Nothing good ever happens after 2:00 am. When 2:00 am rolls around, just go home and go to sleep". Whenever your 2:00 am is. 

One for the road pt. 2: Sweet life

...

  The park was about a couple kilometers away from Jessica's apartment, but she didn't mind walking that much. She wanted to clear her head anyways, she thought the best way about it was to walk in the "not-so-woken-up-yet" town of hers. Growing up in a different country, before moving to study abroad, created this weird conundrum for her; she didn't feel like she belonged anywhere in particular, like she didn't have a place to call home. The house she had grown up with she wasn't really fond of and the place she was staying currently was too recent to create a connection with, so instead of having two homes, she had none. Like a traveler who is between connecting flights, lingering in the airport terminal for a while until they eventually board their next plane. Her world was one gigantic terminal, and since she didn't have a particular destination to be at, she just sort of lingered.


  Shuffling through a couple of songs that didn't quite fit her mood she stumbled upon an old favourite of hers, Frank Ocean's "Sweet Life", who she discovered by accident. She was travelling to Germany to spend Christmas with her godparents in Berlin, for which she had a connecting flight through Amsterdam. Her flight was the morning after, so she had almost a full day by herself. She booked a small room in a cute little hotel she had found online, and when she arrived she left her stuff and ran right out to not lose any precious time. Visiting Amsterdam was one of the top things in her bucket list, even if it were for just a day, so she figured it'd be a nice opportunity to go for a walk an see some sights. Not missing, of course, were her white on-ear headphones, same ones she's had for the past 5 years, a graduation gift from her parents. Walking through the quite cold, Christmas - decorated capital she couldn't hide her amazement of the buildings and architecture of the centre. She was so used to plain old roads and houses you couldn't tell apart, seeing a city that is almost literally floating on water was something extraordinary for her.
  After some exploration and picture-taking in the beautiful canals of the city, she decided to treat herself to a nice hot meal before heading out again. The place was swarming with Argentinian steakhouses and Italian pizzerias, and being a college student she'd have the latter every other day so she chose the former for a change. There, a clearly-not-Argentinian-looking dude welcomed her with a smile on his face and sat her at a table overlooking the local cinema. Table for two for one; Jessica hoped she didn't seem too sad about sitting by herself in a strange city. The beer was cold, the steak was great and the restaurant was playing some weirdly out-of-place tunes which surprisingly fit her music tastes. Eating Argentinian steak while drinking Belgian beer in a what seemed like middle-eastern-ish decorated restaurant in the heart of Amsterdam and listening to old-school hip-hop was something she would have never imagined doing, but there she was. After some funky Biggie songs and chill Nas Illmatic-era beats when something newer, less well known caught her attention. It was chill and had a great vibe behind it, some sweet male vocals as well. She liked noticing small stuff in her songs, like the mellow guitar rhythm or a gentle drum beat that just elevates a song to greatness. Interrupting her delicious dinner she tried to get the attention of the waiter.
  "Excuse me!" she exclaimed, raising her hand.
  The waiter took notice of her immediately and approached her table in an instant. "How can I assist you?" asked the mustached man that kinda looked like a young, less muscular Arnold Schwarzenegger.
  "Sorry to bother you but I really like the song, would you mind telling me who it is from?"
  The waiter let out a genuine laugh and stepped back from the table and into the kitchen. Jessica was baffled and kinda annoyed, as she thought that he was just being rude, making fun of her question. Just when she was ready to get up and leave, the waiter comes back with an even younger looking dude, tall, bearded and tattooed guy who looked like a guy who's last name ended in -sson.
  "This is my brother" said the waiter, "he's the sous-chef and our, erm, DJ of sorts." he added. He left the table and let the other guy do the talking.
  "Mind if I join you?" asked the guy.
  "I don't if you don't" said Jessica, kinda embarrassed by the situation.
  "Danny" he said, extending his arm to Jessica.
  "Jessica" she replied, a bit red on the cheeks. "Sorry about this, I just wanted to know about the song you played a few minutes ago, didn't mean to create all this trouble."
  "No trouble at all" said Danny, "I quite enjoy talking to customers with good music taste." His dutch accent was barely distinguishable through his crystal clear English, Jess thought. Guy before was Frank Ocean, think it was "Sweet life" playing if I recall correctly. I can check it for you if you want." he added.
  Their flirt-ish vibe was all over the dining table but in a weird, "This is fun but we aren't gonna get together" kind of way. They both knew it.
  "No I think that's it, I vaguely remember hearing 'Sweet Life' at some point in the song. Great stuff."
  "Been a fan since Channel Orange" said Danny. "Quite a talented dude." he leaned back on the chair and got comfortable. "So what brings you here?" he asked.
  "A plane" she said without realizing she just made a stupid joke. Danny's half-smile half-disappointed grunt made her retract her statement. "Er, I mean, I have a plane to catch tomorrow. I'm going to Berlin to visit my godparents for Christmas and I just had a connection here."
  "Awesome." said Danny. "Enjoying it so far?"
  "The city is so beautiful!" exclaimed Jessica. "It's just so different than-" She didn't get a chance to  finish her sentence before the waiter interrupted her by giving a disapproving nod to Danny which caught his attention.
  "I'm terribly sorry, I have to get back to work." he said, frowning.
  "It's alright, don't worry" Jessica  nodded.
  "If you'd like I can take you for a walk after I'm done, maybe grab a beer or something " said Danny.
  Jessica considered the option for a while and she found no reasonable reason to refuse the offer, which surprised even her when she did.
  "I was thinking about going to bed early to get some rest" she said, "but thanks for offering anyways!" She flashed an awkward apologetic smile at him while he was getting up.
  "Hey, it's OK don't worry about it." He reached into his pocket and handed her his card. "In case you find yourself lost in Amsterdam in the future." he said, winking.
  She blushed once more, thanking him. After finishing her meal she left the money on the table and sighed a half-hearted goodbye to a lost chance.
  She didn't actually go to the hotel right away. Instead, she walked around the city for a bit more, still listening to music. She pirated the whole Channel Orange album using some Starbucks free wi-fi and listened to it front and back a few times before heading to the hotel; "Sweet life" had become her official theme for the trip. The next morning she left early, went to the airport and flew an uninteresting, short flight to Berlin.


 She'd been walking for around 20 minutes without realizing, and her mood had instantly changed. Her face shifted from a frown to a big smile as she shuffled to a few Channel Orange songs until she reached the park. At one moment she stopped, took her wallet out of her back pocket and shuffled through her credit cards. She takes one of them out, a black-and-gold one with red details that read "Los amigos Argentinian Grill & Tapas Restaurant" with gold letters and a "Johan and Daniel Janssen" underneath. She stared at it for a while and let out an audible laugh. "So close to Jenson" she mumbled. She put the card back in her wallet and continued her walk towards the park.

...
  

Blog no.25: Sing about me

Dear insomniacs,

  It's 4:47 a.m. and I have an exam in roughly 3 hours and a half, so naturally it's a great time to write some stuff, ain't it?
  I've been listening to the my Spotify-generated playlist (which I update every week with my new suggested stuff) for the past few weeks, which is mostly comprised of hip-hop and indie tracks including some really good shit I'd never have known about. It's amazing how much music there is available to us and I'm so grateful for being able to experience it and procrastinate to some amazing tracks, but you know what baffles me? Some people don't even bother searching for music! I mean I get having favourite bands and songs, I have those too, but you are able to type a few words and swim in an ocean of incredible, never-heard-before music and you choose to listen to Drake, Katy Perry or Coldplay on repeat? Don't get me wrong, I like all of those artists and enjoy listening to their stuff but don't you think it's worth discovering stuff by yourself and expanding your music tastes? Hell, even my favourite band, the Red Hot Chili Peppers have so many less-popular songs that are so much better than the overplayed "Snow", "Otherside", "Scar Tissue" and the likes. "Hey" (Not Hey Oh, as an unofficial YouTube video suggested) has one of the most orgasmic solos I've ever heard, even more so than Muse's "Madness". Talking about Muse, they have so many amazing tracks (especially from "The 2nd law") which are not that well known for being too different than their usual stuff. Even Coldplay which I mentioned before have the spectacular "We never change" and the minimalistic "O", two very underrated songs from their discography.
  When I first listen to a song from an artist I don't know about, first thing I do is look them up on the internet (well, Reddit mostly), and find their most popular albums and download them in their entirety. I know I know shame on me for pirating but I'd literally be living in the streets if I paid for all the music I listen to. Point is, listening to an album in it's entirety is a whole different beast from just listening to a few tracks. Albums are supposed to be connected works of art, they tell a story, they have a certain flow to them that gets lost when shuffled and they are destined to be played beginning to end. Haken's "Visions" tells a story about, well, visions, death, dreams, time and ends with the titular track, which loops it back to the beginning. Arcade Fire's "The Suburbs" talks about the effects of growing up in an uninspiring suburban neighborhood in a nostalgic, bittersweet way that takes you way way back. Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the moon" is a brilliant example of a "concept album" because it flows flawlessly, with seemingly zero interruption from one track to the other and multiple callbacks to previous tracks of the same album. But of course the album I want to focus on the most is Kendrick Lamar's "Good kid m.A.A.d city". This album got me into concept albums in the first place a few years back. In the beginning you get in the back of the white van with Kendrick and his gang and you just start rolling around Compton, getting into trouble, going through shootouts, running away from the police, trying to escape the life of gangs, drugs and alcohol and ultimately making it big. It's a perfect album, but more than that it has one of the best lyrical songs I've ever listened to, "Sing about me, I'm dying of thirst".
  "Sing about me" for shorts tells a story from 3 different perspectives. The first person is a troubled young dude who lost his brother in a gang related incident (in the end of "Swimming Pools"), who recalls how difficult it is to grow up as a poor black guy with a bad background and thanks Kendrick for being there for his brother but is ultimately shot in a similar fashion as his brother. The second person is a young girl who blasts Kendrick for mentioning her sister in a previous album (Section .80) as an example of a girl driven to prostitution, saying that he doesn't understand that it was the only way for her and her sister to live since they were in-between foster homes. She mentions that he has no right to talk about her sister because he doesn't know where she is coming from and to let her do her thing without obstructing her life, but ends up fading due to some sexually transmitted illness. Now the third person, that is Kendrick himself. Kendrick talks about how he sees himself trying to make a difference with the only thing that he has, his raps, and that he thinks about death a lot and thus he's trying to make his mark in the world by helping others. Being an influential figure, he knows that he can help people from his neighborhood by getting their stories out even if it comes with sacrificing his own image. What follows is this:
  "And I hope that at least one of you sing about me when I'm gone.
   Now I'm I worth it?
   Did I put enough work in?"
First time I heard those lines they hit me like a truck, because I related so much to what he has to say. We're all trying to make our mark in the world, to be remembered, to have someone sing about us when the lights shut off and it's our time to settle down. It is said that you die twice, once when you stop breathing and once again when your name is mentioned for the last time. It's all very morbid but very true as well, it's in our nature. I don't care about being rich and famous, I don't care about having my statue engraved in the middle of a busy square, I don't care if my name isn't mentioned in the Guinness World Records book. All I'm asking, and all everyone is probably asking is to have at least one person who thinks you're important enough to be remembered. The feeling of knowing that you've positively influenced at least one person is more precious than all the money in the world, so all I have to ask is this: Promise that you'll sing about me when I'm gone, will ya?

Your chosen existentialist,
Stelios Zesiades

Blog no. 24: Films & music

Dear, uh, listeners?

  This one's for music (again) so let's just say the greeting makes sense, yeah? Great. Two days ago was international music day as I found out, and I can't simply let that go unnoticed because if you're not gonna celebrate music what the hell will you ever celebrate about? I wrote a piece in greek for an online magazine a year ago, so allow me to slightly plagiarize myself and translate some of it for this one. Oh and since I'm a huge fan of music and I like to consider myself a cinephile, it made sense to write about them both, so here goes.
  You see, those two mediums are so closely intertwined, nowadays even more so than in previous decades, so you can't have one without the other. Even the absence of a soundtrack is, in a sense, an artistic choice some filmmakers use, with the most concrete example being the complete lack of background music for a large stretch of the Coen bro's "No country for old men" duration, which made everything so realistic, grounded, bleak, giving a sense of dread, making us scared of the things the ever-menacing Javier Bardem (and his equally menacing haircut) would do to get what he wants.
  On the other side of the spectrum, there are others that literally hang from their soundtracks as if it were their lifeline. Star Wars, Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, Jaws wouldn't be nearly as good as they are without John Williams' incredible scores, "The Lord of the Rings" wouldn't be nearly as epic as it is without Howard Shore's bombastic compositions. Einaudi's score for "Les intouchables" and Tiersen's "Amelie" one are basically front and centre in every "listen while you're studying, start contemplating life instead" playlist. Abel Korzeniowski's score (whose name I definitely did NOT have to Google) made my heart fucking pound during last year's "Nocturnal Animals" and I'm not ashamed to say that I shed a tear or two at the end of the second Pokemon movie, when the beautifully simple ocarina melody was played during Lugia's revival. Hell, even forgettable or mediocre movies like "The Notebook" and "Remember Me" are elevated considerably solely on the merit of their incredible soundtracks.
  Whenever you're listening to Simple Minds' "Don't you forget about me" the image of the criminal's fist from "The Breakfast Club" immediately jumps to your head, "Mad World" takes you back to Jake Gylenhaal's manic laughter from "Donnie Darko", The Do's "Dust it off" makes you gaze into "I Origin's" protagonists' beautiful eyes, and Debussy's "Claire de lune" puts you next to "Ocean's Eleven" and in front of the Bellagio Fountains. More recently Fleetwood Mac's "The Chain" made me tear up during the not too shabby Guardians of the Galaxy vol.2 but that might be because it's a really really good song regardless. Tarantino, amongst others, is a master of making a song get stuck in your head and connecting it with his movies and his smug face. Django's "Freedom", Reservoir Dog's "Stuck in the middle with you" and "Little green bag", and Kill Bill's "Twisted nerve" are some of the songs you'll find in my playlist from that stupidly eccentric, brilliant dude's filmography.
  Other directors more recently found some very inventive ways to fit their soundtracks into their movie's narrative. Matthew Vaughn, known for his extremely violent action scenes, manages to blend blood and mayhem with odd music choices in "Kick-Ass" and "Kingsmen", making the scenes jarring, ridiculous and, above all, hella fun. Hans Zimmer uses Edith Piaf's "Je ne regrette rien" as a literal tool for his characters to time their "kicks" in Christopher Nolan's Inception, and utilizes various slowed-down versions of the song in most of the film's soundtrack which is a brilliant way to represent the whole "time slows down in dreams" concept. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross worked together in Fincher's "Gone Girl" in a way that differentiated the dreamy sequences of Amy's diary to the grounded and mysterious scenes of Nick Dunne's attempts to find the truth. In Wong Kar Wai's "In the mood for love", the same song is being repeated throughout the whole movie, but the duration of it is analogous to the closeness of the two main characters.
   There's just so many examples but, being a *cough* responsible *cough* university student, I will spare you the details so I can actually pretend to study for my exams. Either way you can all make me and yourselves a favour and pay attention to a movie's soundtrack, it might just make you understand movies a bit more and make your music collection grow a bit bigger.

Your friendly know-it-all,
Stelios Zesiades.

P.S.