One of my first music related memories involves a fan made video for Avatar – The Last Airbender. The video used clips from the show, mostly of Katara, Zuko and Aang, and the background song became a favourite of mine instantly – Somewhere I Belong by Linkin Park.
It was uploaded to a sort of German YouTube, but the website and all of its content have been removed after YouTube became too popular to keep up with. I haven’t found it anywhere else so I’m assuming things on the internet don’t actually stay there forever, and I’ll likely never get to see it again. But at least I get to keep the music.
Somewhere I Belong is one of my favourite songs even all those years later. I remember hunting down Meteora as a bit of a challenge. I can recall being in store listening to the audio samples of the album that included this wonderful song used in the video, but it wasn’t in stock or I didn’t have enough money. Either way, when I finally got the album I was overjoyed, feeling victorious after a long fight.
This was the wonderful time in which I actually used a CD player. I don’t anymore, out of comfort, but listening to albums in full is still the best way to consume music in my opinion. I’d lie on my bed, reading the lyrics from the booklet (if the artist was so kind to include them), learn every song of any album I could get my hands on by heart. I don’t have as much free time anymore, I don’t get to experience albums as intensely as I did back then. The first few albums, Meteora being one of them, will forever be extra special to me.
When I got Meteora, I was playing Avatar video games a lot. Avatar, if you don’t know, is set in a fictional world using a lot of Asian themes. This is also resembled in the background music; the atmosphere is created with Asian instruments. Now I was playing these games, listening to Meteora over and over again, with tracks using unusual samples. The start of Nobody’s Listening in particular felt a lot like it could fit into the world of Avatar. The two things, through how I found the album and how I consumed it, became deeply connected in my head.
I will never be anything till I break away from me
Somewhere I Belong
Since the lyrics match the Avatar character Zuko so well – he is trying to find his place in the world, and a lot of pain and anger is involved – I wanted the character of the image to resemble him. The piece is about chaos, fear, but also finding strength and power inside yourself. A bit like playing a new video game.
jenyoyo 