Music

I remember loving The Little Mermaid when I was around 6 years old. I loved the way Ariel's voice sounded as well as all the rest of the music from the movie. Her song in the grotto is what first made me want to learn to sing, and I've been doing it for years ever since. I've sung in multiple choirs, various settings, and played around with a couple genre's from artists that I listen to frequently. Music is my life, and there's rarely a day that goes by when it isn't involved in some way, shape, or form. But all of these situations have always had something in common: they were always low key. I always thought I could be alright with people hearing me sing on a very singular basis, but really deep down I've always been terrified to be heard. Sure, I did it in the concert setting when I went to a private Christian school and performed in front of an audience, but I had the blanket protection of the group. The attention wasn't specifically on me. I couldn't really bring myself to acknowledge my terror it until I've been dared to sing songs I knew by heart at some of the Truth or Dare games I've been going to in the last few months. I came to this realization especially because I didn't even want anyone to know that I got dared to do it and subsequently went through with it. I feared that someone else would dare me to do it again.

But now, I almost want to welcome the challenge. Part of the reason I choose dares is to help me do the things I haven't allowed myself to believe I could do, and I'm ready to start trying to fight this very old trepidation of mine. I'm still not going to outright say anything about it to anyone without some prompting, but I will continue to allow myself to be open to the idea that I can be confident if it should happen, and that I don't just sound average. I've been told that I'm good (although I really think that's subjective and I don't consider myself to be any sort of virtuoso), so I'm just going to let people have their opinions and continue doing what is inspiring to me.

There's no better beginning than music. It lifts your soul. Binds our hearts. Frees our mind. I took a deep breath today. I let myself relax. I allowed myself to release all the guilt and negativity. I accepted that I have nothing left I can do. I have laid my cards on the table. It is up to the other players in this game to decide, are you folding? I have 3 playlists. One from college, one from the beginning of my relationship, and one from a little bit of a rough spot... our first real challenge. My college playlist reminds me of how much I am really capable of. How I CAN do the things I want. They are not always easy, but they are an option. It also remind me that being all about myself is a very lonely road to travel. How material things are not what I seek in life. They are nice to have but I have had them before and unfortunately they are not able to hold a conversation, hold you when you need comforted, and tell you good morning beautiful. My next playlist reminds me of how wonderful it is to have someone just as devoted to your love as you are to theirs. In the beginning, a pure heart-felt smile can mean the world to you knowing you helped put it there. Having someone to come home to, to lay your head on their chest and just enjoy being, together. It however also reminds me that this phase, after the initial honeymoon phase, is not always around. You get tired of one another. You fight, argue, pick at one another, and that's ok. This is strengthening the bond you have already started building. The more you work through it, the stronger you get as a unit. My final playlist I discovered today I'm just going to call struggle. It reminds me of the lows my relationship got to and I SURVIVED. WE survived. WE came out of. Not because of someone else, but because we found the strength, the love, the fight inside of US to get through it. The flip side to this one however is that it also reminds me that I guess arguments aren't always resolvable. They don't always strengthen within that relationship, but individually. Sometimes those fights, disagreements, and not so fun times end up leading one another in different directions. It may not happen simultaneously though. Sometimes it is more quickly to affect one or the other. Leaving one to wonder what happened. Where do we go from here I'm not sure where to go from here exactly. I'm not sure if it will cycle around this time. I'm not sure this is where we both still come running to one another or if this is the fizzle at the end of the sparkler. I do still love and care very much but if I'm once again the only one interested in addressing things, I'm not willing to travel that road again. I want a two way street. This is not an attempt to bash anyone. There are faults on either side, but I am not going to allow myself to take credit for the majority. Together we entered this relationship, together we created the good, the bad, and the not so sure what. Together though, we can fix things if both parties are willing. Anyways! Back to my music and back to life. No matter where our minds are stuck, life keeps moving.

To change a quote by the late Jim Morrison: "Music got me the wound and will get me well."

Over the past year, there has been a numerous amount of times where I have felt free and happy and clear of all the bullshit and drama caused over the past years of my life. Those were concerts. Either ones I was playing in or ones I was at.

The one in particular which I look back at was Mayhem last year down in Noblesville. That was the show that made me feel alive again. In one single day, I had the past ten years of my life rebooted. I walked out of there a new person. I went there alone, the first major concert I have ever been to by myself, and was able to do all the things I wanted to do without having to worry about who I was with or what they were feeling, or where they were. I was there for me and the music...and the music healed me.

The music knew I was there. It grabbed me, smacked me in the face and shouted "Wake up, mother fucker!" It drove me to start a new band, which I am proud to be a part of now. It drove me to get out of the house more and quit moping about my problems. It drove me to live the way I have needed to live instead of living the way I was forced into all my life.

Every show I go to now, I go alone. Yes, it's always nice to have someone there with you, especially a woman, but to know that all you need when you walk into that show is the music and to know that the music will be the one who will stand by you the whole way and not ask to leave early or sit down or not totally enjoy what is happening or find some random thing to bitch about and ruin your time...that's what I go for now. I'm glad to have been with the music for those moments it helped me recover and I am proud to be a part of someone else's moment when they are there for the music and I get to play it for them.

I live for this shit.

I forgot! This used to be fun! I don't know why I've spent so much time pushing myself.

Songs and albums and bands are bookmarks in the catalog of feelings I've felt, in the periods of my life I've lived through.

From top to bottom, a simple little riff, a savage blasting beat, a pulsing of the thump.

Why can't you just play the fucking riff right?

It's like trying to teach a child to hammer a nail when the child does not know what a nail is or even what part of your finger they are supposed to hit with the hammer.

Play the fucking riff right.

I wonder what system of reason you form in the misunderstanding of what I wish to do musically. This isn't "play the solo lead for five minutes thinking I still matter as a guitar player." This isn't "I'm a seventies rock god and can play nothing but washed out Joe Walsh riffs." This is MY musical dream, mother fucker. Just play the fucking riff.

JUST PLAY THE FUCKING RIFF!

How hard is that for you to understand?

How does such a simple, beautifully complex, creative mathematical construct affect me so much? Music can turn my darkest mood to pure bliss - or perfectly tint it darker still. My heart soars to love songs and aches to laments, it races to passionate ballads and thunders in my chest in accompaniment to the angrier selections of my collection.

I'm just utterly transported. Frankly I'm amazed they let me listen to music at work(and even provide awesome headphones!), this shit is much better than getting drunk.

I drove at the speed limit so I could finish singing along to the song before I showed up at her house.

Lately I've been listening to the oddest music combinations. That is, I'm listening to every genre I've ever heard of breaching out in to the heart of the jazzy singers of a far from bygone era to the metal, rust encrusted albums of modern Scandinavian death metal. More strangely than that I find I am completely obsessed with the film scores of one man : Clint Mansell.

Clint Mansell has composed so many different scores including one of my absolute favorite movies : The Fountain. He also wrote the score for π (Pi, in case the symbol didn't show up), Requiem for a Dream, Sahara, Smokin Aces, and more. He's absolutely brilliant. I love the movies Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain. The music in each has a few parallels but for the most part they are so different. I'm going on a Clint Mansell spree. Next time I have some extra money, I'm going to buy another soundtrack and then another.

His music, somehow, truly touches me. It inspires real emotion. I haven't had a single artist do that to me in years. Not since I first discovered that there was more to the world than awful pop songs and country music to the effect of my dog got hit by a train and now I'm in my truck talking to my ex-gal, I'm so sad I'm going to drink myself to death. When I was re-introduced to classic rock, alternative rock, metal, it touched me, it surfaced emotions I had buried. But now there's a different sort of feeling. I feel more full. I feel as though I'm not so alone.

Whenever I listen to The Fountain's soundtrack I think of my boyfriend. We watch that and Across the Universe a lot when we're together. But....The Fountain is so different. If you haven't seen it, I think you should go out to the local movie rental shop and grab it because it's the first movie I've seen since I was 5 that actually made me cry.

The whole experience, the sounds, the sights,the strange parallels to something in my life, the whole thing is just too amazing....

I don't know how else to put it.....the only thing I'll add is that the VERY LAST track on The Fountain score is the most beautiful thing I've heard. It brings tears to my eyes whenever I hear it, and if not tears then it fills my whole being with this shaking feeling. I feel like air, like water.... I feel like I'm flowing along with it.

I love music in almost all forms.

Fun fact: Music tastes are personal and unique (even if they're not) so fighting about music is stupid. Don't ever do it again.

I love it when music, usually an instrumental piece, makes me feel an emotion I don't even have a name for.

Music makes me think. It makes me long and pine, for things I probably don't deserve. I went to the hardware store today. That place always reminds me of her, because, I dunno, she's usually the reason I'm there, what with my trade currently focusing around her. "Cupid's Chokehold" by Gym Class Heroes starts playing. The instant I walked in, actually. This song makes me think of her like nothing else. Not only is it one of "those songs," but she is the one who introduced me to them. Come to think of it, she introduced me to all my favorite bands. Well. Except Depeche Mode. Finger Eleven introduced me to Depeche Mode. And Dragonball Z introduced me to Finger Eleven (the "Fucking Funimation!" version).

"I hate music. It's got too many notes." - the Replacements

Live music makes me sleepy. Recorded music makes me shake it. I don't know why. But I definitely, as a rule, hate music. Just so I can quote the Replacements.

I pride myself on the fact that I listen to entire genres of music almost nobody's heard of.

The whole idea of music was a brilliant concept. Something simple to pass the time or something complex to loose yourself in.

You go to concerts to enjoy yourself with other persons of a like mind, or at least, of a similar music taste. You sit or stand around a small venue or a huge concert hall or anything else, someone's fuckin back yard.

Music is the expression that people want to project onto others. Occassionally the message will be understood by someone who hears it and that's the point. The point is to be free to express yourself. Music can be beautiful and serene or it can be harsh and unforgiving. Who am I to say though?