NUMBNESS

"You won't come, you won't care if I live or die today"

SONGWRITING

As I explained in the post about the song Catharsis, the idea of Numbness came from a desire of transmitting a real deep melancholic feeling. I am a really melancholic person and this remains reflected in some melodies of my songs and the lyrics too. In this particular case, I needed to express a feeling of absolute powerlessness but from a sad and rather vulnerable perspective this time, instead of being inspired by the usual angry rocker mood, as lots of songs on this album have been conceived and recorded.

The story behind this song is pretty simple and literal. I was deeply in love with that guy who told me I was crazy and I couldn’t do anything else but to accept it the way it was. That led me to an empty state of mind where my feelings had to be numb in order to survive and, though I was feeling that way, I had to carry on with my life at the same time one way or another, so I was experiencing a real contradiction in my own skin, living a life that was not worthwhile for me anymore. 

But to speak more precisely about the concrete event that inspired this song, I must go back to a July day in 2012. I was living in Barcelona and I had just finished my cinema director career, so I used to go clubbing with some schoolmates to celebrate the end of the course. One night, I met a guy who had a really gay look and he was very handsome too. I flirted with him despite the fact that he said that he was not gay. However, everybody around me thought the same and said to me that he was clearly gay. At the end of the night, he became really violent and started to break bottles and insult people, so I decided to give that flirting up. I felt simply stupid and pathetic because I had spent the whole night trying to get laid with that guy only to forget about the other guy but, in the end, it was me the one who was alone one more night, as usual.

I sat alone on a bench on the street, feeling completely empty. I had never felt that empty in my whole life. There was absolutely no point in anything. I sat there for at least one hour, watching people walking by and expecting someone to stop and tell me: “Are you ok?” Obviously, no one did because they were exactly as empty as I was, or, at least, that’s the way I felt it. I wanted to cry but I couldn’t, I wanted to scream and I couldn’t either. I just wanted to feel something, I wanted to feel real and, in the end, the only thing I could think about was the guy I was in love with, wishing that he would suddenly appear to give me a strong hug.

Fortunately, I also knew that that horrible moment could be reflected in a song and it did. Art has always been my greatest escape and will always be.

PRODUCTION

This song was directly recorded with a higher key. I wanted to record the verses again before releasing it because I wanted the voice to sound more whispered but I finally decided to leave it this way and, though the voice doesn’t exactly sound the way I like in the verses, I think you can find beauty in the imperfections sometimes and I also really like how the voice sounds in the choruses and the final high note.