There are times in your life where you sit down and look at yourself and those around you and wonder how much you really know. How much do I know about me? How much do I know about my friends? How much do they know about me?

I’ve been trying to figure myself out, but I can’t. Most people see me as the goofy, fun-loving Mickey Mouse fan. An overly sentimental father who weeps at the sight of his children, who checks to make sure they are breathing at night. That’s true. I am those men. And yet, there’s the part of me who loves the darkness of a David Lynch film. I hide my politics from others, for my own reasons, and yet I get so angry when I see something the world does that is supremely stupid.

Lately, though, I’ve been analyzing myself through the music I listen to on a daily basis. I’ve found that, in one respect I’m a romantic. I love songs of beautiful simplicity about love. Songs that notice minor details about life. On the other hand, I like boldly experimental music that breaks all the boundaries of conventional music. And on my third hand, grown from exposure to radioactive waste, I like a dark brooding music that destroys any sense of hope you have. All of these songs, I think, describe me by the images and emotions that are associated with them.

Take for instance the music of Ben Folds, who can really span all three. In one instance, he writes a song that’s so brutally honest about a love that it is heart breaking:

i don't get
many things right the first time
in fact, i am told that a lot
now i know all the wrong turns,
the stumbles and falls brought me here
and where was i before the day
that i first saw your lovely face
now i see it everyday
and i know

that i am, i am
i am the luckiest
what if i'd been born
fifty years before you
in a house
on the street where you live
maybe i'd be outside
as you passed on your bike
would i know?
in a wide sea of eyes
i see one pair that i recognize
and i know

that i am, i am
i am the luckiest

i love you more than i have
ever found a way to say to you
next door
there's an old man
who lived into his nineties
and one day passed away in his sleep
and his wife, she stayed
for a couple of days and passed away
i'm sorry i know that's a
strange way to tell you that i know
we belong
that i know

that i am, i am
i am the luckiest

It’s the image of the old couple that gets me. I think that’s me in that song. Singing about my wife. In fact, if I had the talent for piano and singing, I’d sing this song to my wife every morning when she woke up. Because, it’s true. I love her more than I have ever found a way to say. But, with this song, I can say it. Through a proxy.

Again, on that honest love front is Stephin Merritt of Magnetic Fields (and fifty other bands, really).

Dance with me my old friend
once before we go
Let's pretend this song won't end
and we never have to go home
and we'll dance among the chandeliers
And nothing matters when we're dancing
In tat or tatters you're entrancing
Be we in Paris or in Lansing
nothing matters when we're dancing
You've never been more beautiful
your eyes like two full moons
than here in this poor old dancehall
among the dreadful tunes
the awful songs we don't even hear...

Again, it’s my wife and my inability to communicate my hopes and dreams to her. That song is us. I picture the two of us, dressed in all the trappings of a Busby Berkley musical, floating in the air among a gaudy chandelier. Waltzing through the air in each other’s arms.

Sometimes I feel the love so strongly it over takes me. I don’t know what to do with the extra emotions. “But you’re so beautiful that you make me want to cry.”

I don’t feel lightly. I don’t feel in grays. I emote with a primitive ferocity that is betrayed by my wont for the sentimental. It’s all black and white. Either I feel it or I don’t. But when I feel it, I feel it with the power of a Super Nova ready to burst.

In a way, it’s a shame that others can’t feel with such ferocity. It’s a shame that they can’t walk out their door and be so taken with the beauty of a sunset that they need to sit down. Or that they can’t feel what I feel when I watch my wife sleep at night, her chest rising and falling with her rhythmic breathing. It’s almost as if I can’t breathe, I’m so overtaken with emotion and gratitude.

But, for each wonderful emotion I feel with strength, there is a darkness. Yes, I check my kids when they sleep. The fear and need to protect them is overwhelming, especially at night. The fear that death is a step away for one, or all, of us. Sometimes I feel like I should stay awake all night, to guard the ones I love from anything that can harm them. It’s my prime directive.

But, those dark feelings extend further. To the darkness that I don’t understand. Probably never will. I suppose it’s born out of the feeling of loss I still feel over the loss of my parents, the loss of friends, the death and holes that life has left behind me. After all, as Wayne Coyne says:

Love is the greatest thing a heart can know
but the hole that it leaves in its absence
can make you feel so low

But the darkness goes further, to areas I can’t describe. And that’s where Nick Cave comes in. I view Nick Cave as a traveling Medieval Troubadour who comes to your town to tell the sordid tales of the wicked and despicable. They’re irresistible songs. So pained, so literate, so raw.

And so I've left my home
I drift from land to land
I am upon your step and you are a family man
Outside the vultures wheel
The wolves howl, the serpents hiss
And to extend this small favour, friend
Would be the sum of earthly bliss
Do you reckon me a friend?
The sun to me is dark
And silent as the moon
Do you, sir, have a room?
Are you beckoning me in?

The words contain a darkness that feels like an exposed nerve. Dripping Milton references, darkness, coldness, anger . . . Who doesn’t feel this way? Or:

As I sat sadly by her side
The kitten she did gently pass
Over to me and again we pressed
Our different faces to the glass
"That may be very well", I said
"But watch the one falling in the street
See him gesture to his neighbours
See him trampled beneath their feet
All outward motion connects to nothing
For each is concerned with their immediate need
Witness the man reaching up from the gutter
See the other one stumbling on who can not see"

With trembling hand I turned toward her
And pushed the hair out of her eyes
The kitten jumped back to her lap
As I sat sadly by her side

Then she drew the curtains down
And said, "When will you ever learn
That what happens there beyond the glass
Is simply none of your concern?
God has given you but one heart
You are not a home for the hearts of your brothers

And God does not care for your benevolence
Anymore than he cares for the lack of it in others
Nor does he care for you to sit
At windows in judgment of the world He created
While sorrows pile up around you
Ugly, useless and over-inflated"

Again, so inextricably my wife and me. Our arguments of optimism versus pessimism. We switch sides periodically, but this is us. Utterly us.

But, Nick can represent both sides of us. The darkness and . . . The better stuff of love:

I don't believe in an interventionist God
But I know, darling, that you do
But if I did I would kneel down and ask Him
Not to intervene when it came to you
Not to touch a hair on your head
To leave you as you are
And if He felt He had to direct you
Then direct you into my arms
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms

The thing about Nick Cave is that you don’t know who he is. What he represents. Is he outside petting the kitten, or holding it under the water. It’s his enigma that entrances me. I don’t know who he is. But then, who am I? Who are you?

Finally, I leave you again with Wayne Coyne. He bridges the goofiness, the emotion the darkness with this wonderful little bit that sums up what is probably my own world view. The dreadful and the hope rolled into one:

Do You Realize - that you have the most beautiful face
Do You Realize - we're floating in space -
Do You Realize - that happiness makes you cry
Do You Realize - that everyone you know someday will die

And instead of saying all of your goodbyes - let them know
You realize that life goes fast
It's hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn't go down
It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round

So. Who am I, really? Hell if I know. If I had that figured out I’d probably be the sanest man on Earth.

And we all know that’s not true, don’t we?