Music's effect on me

I have a very strange, very close relationship with music. I could never fall in love with anyone who didn't connect with music the way I do. I've known a few people that I had a lot of chemistry with, but they didn't engage with music (I don't listen -- I engage) and that broke the current.

I love me some good deep language in the lyrics. If words are used in new, fresh ways -- If I can't guess what's coming next because of a predictable rhyme or cliche phrase -- I get a really attached. I get really affected. I can't NOT pay attention to a song's lyrics.

I can also appreciate good composition. This has become more evident to me as I get into techno/electronica sounds, because these genres are all about the composition. I don't have perfect pitch like my brother, my own music-making skills are rather limited to some very amateur guitar, but I have an ear for things that sound good. When I hear something new and interesting that's composed well or has some element of originality to it, it immediately catches my attention. I'm also attracted by unique voices, like Michael Stipe and Stevie Ray Vaughn.

Instrumentation is another thing that draws me to music. One of the reasons I just can't appreciate emo is the unskillful application of sounds and use of instruments. Guitars are more than chords, they're more than power chords certainly, they're more than whammy bars and distortion. So when I hear someone who really knows how to play the guitar, who knows how to *treat* a guitar, my ears perk up. In fact, I first listened to Coheed & Cambria because I was really impressed with their handling of the guitar. (I tend to focus on guitar just because that's what I play, and it's often the most noticeable instrument in the music I listen to. I also really like piano.)

What's interesting about my relationship with music is just that -- the very strong relationship that I'll form with a song, a group, an album, a playlist, etc. I'll get on kicks where all I listen to is one particular artist or even a certain song. Usually I get so attached to that song that my environment, my emotional state, my situation and location, everything becomes almost irrevocably attached to the song/album/artist. For instance, I started listening to Iron and Wine just before winter, when it was just starting to get cold. Now I can listen to some of those songs and all I can think about is winter and cold. But there is one that I didn't hear until the next fall, and that one is definitely connected to fall -- even though it's called "Faded from Winter."

I hear Stabbing Westward and I'm transported back to the school bus riding to Winterguard competitions when I was in tenth grade, while I was on my SW kick. I hear the Cure and I go back two years to some unfortunate times in my dorm, made even more unfortunate by the fact that I really really love the Cure and can't separate it from these negative memories and experiences. I hear Boards of Canada, and I'm sitting in the passenger's seat of Shawn's explorer, staring out the skylight at a summer sky until my neck gets sore. I hear the corny 90s R&B love song "All my Life" by K-Ci and Jojo and I can see the CD that my first serious boyfriend made for me, I feel the angry thoughts I had towards my parents, I remember one weekend when they made me go on a family walk and all I did was listen to the CD as we walked around the park. I remember the light, the weather, everything about it. Just from hearing a song.

But to me it feels like it's not mere memory of "the last time I heard this song." Most of the time, my strongest connections are to where I was the *first* time I really got into a song/artist. It is really transporting. If I hear Linkin Park, I go back to teenage rebellion. I don't just remember it, I experience it. I go through the same bitterness and self-centeredness and resentment that dominated me when I listened to Linkin Park every day. I hear Sevendust and remember the person who burned me the first and only Sevendust CD I ever owned and the 6:30 am bus to school when I used to listen to it. I hear Ace of Base, Sugar Ray, and Barenaked Ladies, and I'm in a hotel room in Liechtenstein thirteen years ago with a healing black eye, watching the only TV channel that has English. I hear anything from Oasis's "What's the Story, Morning Glory?" and I am battling level 15 on Tetris World on my brother's Xbox.

I really hope I never break up with music, that this relationship just gets better and better. I'm glad I have something in my life that I *can* engage with as strongly as I do with music, with songs, with lyrics and compositions. It's something really enriches my life. I continue to discover some really phenomenal music and add it to this library of connections I have. I try to guess what songs will transport me back to this point in my life, if any. I don't really think I'm on a kick right now, but you never know what I might associate with that last summer of college and all the myriad concerns that are complicating my life right now.

If music be the food of love, play on.