This dark mood from an unsettling song

Today I was afraid of a song and it's put me in a dark mood. It's not one I'll link or that I even know the name of.

My dad was listening to his soft Cantonese pop music in the car today on the way back from a restaurant. His music usually makes me feel well, although I don't understand the words. It's generally warm and comforting, and emotional in a safe, romance-movie sort of way.

And then a song came up with a sort of pop-funky beat—I don't know what the proper term for it would be—and every so often, the singer, a male, would vocalize a "Myaaaa" sort of noise. That's an 'æ' kind of 'a', like in the word 'at.' Something disturbed me about it, and I hoped the song was just some funky, quirky tune that people would go dancing to, or something, since that would put it in a happier context. It was giving me a bad feeling.

Since childhood I've been nervous around repetitive sounds that I know are coming but I just don't know when, such as low-battery alarms that sound at few-minute intervals. But it's even worse when it's an unsettling sound, like the singer's cry certainly was—what if I suddenly decide the sound itself is something to be afraid of? Then the anticipation of its next iteration will be even worse, sort of a sense of not being able to escape. I waited out the song, but I kept wishing for it to be over.

When it was finished, I said, "That's a strange song."

My mom, who also doesn't understand enough Cantonese, chuckled a bit, and said of the final "myaaaa" sound, "Is he a cat?" Oh, I wished it was just about a cat.

"He is a prisoner," my dad said in a solemn tone of voice. He went on to describe what the lyrics are about. The prisoner is expressing remorse for his crime, saying his mother never loved him, he got into drugs, he hung out with the wrong crowd—all between lashes of the whip, which are making him cry out so horribly.

It's hard to say. Maybe that explanation would be disappointing, anticlimactic, to you, or even to me once this mood has passed. Feeling guilty for bad things one has done earlier in life is not at all a new emotion to write about. But in the moment, it felt so dark and miserable. I thought about the prisoner being overcome with such deep regret. He sounds so desperate when he cries out, like he knows his own doings have brought himself misery for life, that he'll never be loved again. I tried to comfort myself with the modern movement of criminal rehabilitation, and the time a man who had served time for homicide came in to tell my sociology class his inspiring story of educating himself in jail and getting out. But these thoughts all seemed so distant in the face of this.

I told my dad to skip that song if it came up on his playlist again. I think it was made worse by being in the car at night, which puts me on edge sometimes; and by my dad's solemnity in explaining it, when I'm used to looking to him for strength and calmness. In the car I was trying to figure out quite what that sad and scared feeling was, since I'd had it before and it's very unpleasant. I think now that it's hopelessness: a lament that the world has such hopeless things in it sometimes and a resignation to the fact that people will experience it. Knowing that helps, as does writing about it; it makes me feel like having such a horrible feeling is somewhat worth it, that I've apprehended it and maybe I have a new feeling in my collection of feelings, or something, though I'd still rather not have it at all. I should do something more cheerful now.