h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In real life, I'm usually to busy trying to keep it all together. When things are happening, I don't step back to see the big picture. The little things consume me and I get through it. Whatever it happens to be. Only when I'm sitting back watching others, do I have the luxury of breaking down and letting it all out.

Bigger even than that, though, is music.

I have a CD called 'Black Angels' by the Kronos Quartet. The lead track, by George Crumb, was inspired by the Vietnam war. All the pieces were written in response to or about a war or dedicated to those affected by war. I listen to it infrequently, for not only does it require one's full attention for the hour or so it takes to play through, but the emotional cost is heavy. These are some of the most powerful pieces of music I have ever heard, and I have yet to listen through it without letting the tears flow, usually during Istvan Marta's "Doom. A Sigh".

There are also a few times in real life as well.

I have only cried over the deaths of two people. One was Douglas Adams. The other was my father. He crashed his plane into a hill five days before my sister's wedding, which would have been the first time I would have seen him in about 15 years. We all made our way out to Montgomery for the funeral and I was in pretty good shape until I was walking around before the service started. They had set his car up outside with the top down and his jacket draped backwards over one seat and my stepmom's over the other. I think that was the point at which it really hit me that he was gone and I just lost it.

I would have at the wedding but I was running the video, without a tripod.

I also, almost without fail, cry every time I have to leave my girlfriend, or vice versa. (We live about 500 miles apart.)