Constant Companion

Mangocitrus left me a note on my previous entry asking what my favorite song is so that she could add it to a compilation CD that she’s making. In all honesty, I’ve never given serious thought to how big of a part of my life music is. Sure, I’ve known for years that it is a large part but I’ve never really pondered the size of that part.

Being raised in a very strict Christian home, I wasn’t allowed to hear anything even resembling rock and roll. In fact, I wasn’t even allowed to listen to Raffi or Joe Scruggs or other kids tunes when I was little, unless they were “Jesus Songs.”

As I got older I began to hear these strange, hypnotic auditory sensations coming from cars, or from store speakers, or from headphones of classmates at school. Suddenly I realized that I was missing out on something that grabbed my attention like a huge hand around my throat.

The day after I turned 16 was the day that I started my first “real” job (meaning I didn’t work for a family member and I had to pay taxes). I worked my ass off and was consistently working 50-60 hours a week for my first six or seven months there (until they realized just how much I was working and MADE me work less).

I spent those first two weeks of employment scouring newspaper ads like mad. I was consumed with finding something that had I had coveted for years; my own CD player.

The day I got paid my dad took me to Circuit City and I bought my first CD player, and I also talked him into letting me get a few CD’s that “weren’t bad (I’m ashamed to say that my first two CD’s were Richard Marx and Michael Bolton).

Thus my affair with music began.

Over the years music has been one of the few constants in my life. It’s been there for me when I felt alone. It was there for me through all the drugs. It was there for me through the depression and suicide attempts. It was there for me through 13 months of treatment and through the shittiest parts of my life. It has also been there for me through the good things too.

One night about five months after my 16th birthday, my dad brought me home from work and sat me down and told me how he had gone through all my CD’s and had gotten rid of them because of how I had gotten so many “bad” ones. To add insult to injury, after lecturing me for (no exaggeration) two hours, he made me go with him to some special church meeting and made me go up front to get prayed for at that end.

That night I literally almost killed my parents.

Music was one of the few things that helped keep me sane when I was in high school. It became part of my identity. It was there to keep me company when the depression rolled over me like a thick blanket of fog. It took root in my mind and grew and flourished and not even a few years of trying to be a Christian could tear it from my brain.

There really isn’t any way to really describe how deeply, and thoroughly music has shaped and changed who I am.

In a way music is a tool for people to share different aspects of the human experience that could never otherwise be accurately conveyed. It’s probably the closest thing that humans have to be able to convey raw emotion and feelings and unspoken thoughts. It’s hypnotic. It’s therapeutic. It’s almost telepathic. And it’s still a huge part of my life.

Asking if I have a favorite song or band is like asking a good parent to pick a favorite child. Almost every CD I own has some sort of special significance. Maybe it helped me through a hard time. Maybe listening to it instantly brings back memories of something. Maybe it sends my mind to a place that it wouldn’t be able to go to on its own.

Even after years and years I still love it just as much as I did when it was forbidden and taboo and had the mysterious “why do my parents say that it’s bad?” aura around it. Time hasn’t been able to diminish my feelings for it.

If only relationships with people could work out so perfectly…

*
“I wanna bleed
Show the world all that I have inside
I wanna scream
Let the blood flow that keeps me alive
*
My love is music
I will marry melody
Won’t you let me take you for a ride?
You can’t stop the world
Try to change my mind
Won’t you let me show you how it feels?
You can stop the world but you won’t change me
I need music to set me free
To let me bleed.”
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Cold