Musings on music

Many may argue it's medicine. Others may claim that it's planes. Some may suggest the internet. Probably a lot would say it was fire. But for me the advancement that i am most grateful for in the course of humanity is the moment when some caveman or woman, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, started banging two bones together and decided that they liked the way the beat affected them.

I am of course talking about music. I know in the grand scheme of things it may not be the greatest discovery made my mankind, that other things have improved the quality and length of our lives much more. But i struggle to think of one thing which improves my life more in terms of a man made affect. I'm ignoring stuff like love and friendship, which top it, because i don't believe we had a choice. It is human nature to fall in love and try and surround ourselves with friends. I reckon we had a choice with music, someone, somewhere, sometime discovered that by creating sounds they could find enjoyment.

Pretty much every civilisation to exist has had music; most human beings will at some point in their life hear some form of music. Whether they're checking out the latest release of their favourite band on spotify or itunes, or listening to the tribal drumming of the elders of their tribe, their lives will encounter and in most cases be enriched by music.

From a personal point of view music is my inspiration and my saviour. I've never found any interest in religion, drink can dull the pain occasionally i guess, but it is music that can lift me out of the deepest of depressions. Whether by listening to lyrics which remind me that i am not alone in feeling this pain or by hearing a riff or drum line which fills me so completely as to make thinking about whatever has got me down impossible. It brings me back to the surface when i feel like i'm drowning.

I'm a melodramatic chap (as anyone who knows me has probably grasped) and for me music is the soundtrack, the course, the catalyst and the cure for most things in my life.

Music has the power to inspire in me the most intense happiness, a kind of comfort and bliss which people strive all their life to discover. There've been times during my teenage years when i fought through hours of school i didn't want to endure, only to hear that final bell, stick my ipod in and forget for a time anything else. Lose myself in a piece of music and stop caring about my teenage dramas.

I've got a corkboard full of gig tickets in front of me, and every piece of paper reminds me of happy memories, nights spent in the company of great friends and great music. Memories of dancing to songs without a care in the world for the fact that i am one of the worst dancers ever to grace the planet. Memories of singing along to songs i know every word of, that mean more to me than a few well chosen words and guitar chords.

It is a rare scenario where music is not in someway involved in my life. If i'm in my room then i will have music on, unless i'm watching a film or it's the 15 minutes before i fall asleep. If i'm out on my own then i'll have my ipod in. If i'm with friends then there is almost certainly some set of lyrics or some section of tune bouncing around my head. When i run, i run without an ipod, but i find my breathing ends up being in time with the song filling my mind.

I analyse everything, try to find meaning in every miniscule moment, and often, due to the less desirable aspects of my personality, i find reasons to be sad in most things. But music, it frustrates that side of me. Even the most depressing song moves me in a way that i find impossible to view as negative. I fell in love with music at an early age and it's a love that's lasted, without a sign of faltering or fading.

One reason behind my certainty that no matter what else happens in my life, i will still love music, is the fact that is limitless. It is a constantly evolving thing, every day someone somewhere picks up an instrument for the first time, with dreams of creating something that someone might enjoy.

Sadly i was never gifted with much potential for creating music, but i will accept my failings as a creator so long as i can continue to enjoy listening to it so much. The list of things that matter to me as much as music can literally be listed on one hand, and that is a testament in itself to it's importance.

There's a quote from a song that annabel once told me about, a quote that i believe means quite a lot to her, which seems kind of fitting as an ending note here.

"music is my first love, it will always be my last"

Here's a frankly pretty poor attempt at poetry (or something resembling poetry) that i wrote a year or two ago

The last petal clings to the flower
to let go is to give up,
to hold on seems impossible

That fragile last stand of faith
so little force is needed to crush it
to strip the petal from its home
and snuff out the last facade of hope

It would seem the cruelest act
but that fight for survival
so desperate and painful
can hurt so much
that maybe that cruel act
is actually the kindest thing

for it is true
that hope can hurt a thousand times more than despair

Random retrospective ramblings

Another old one this, written towards the end of Y13.

I find myself reflecting back on my own actions an awful lot. I also reflect back on my friends actions too much, and the actions of complete strangers. Basically i think too much at times, i overthink things until the issues are twisted so far out of proportion and often reality that they are almost unrecognisable to anyone fortunate enough not to have been part of that particular train of thought.

I'm an idiot. I find the bad side of a good thing with an ease that sadly comes from practice. I find myself analysing the expression of someone when i walked into a room, and attributing a whole range of emotions and thoughts to what was most likely an unrelated expression. I can see a simple, perfectly pleasant text and imagine a pit of hatred within it directed at me.

I have done and still do doubt almost every single friendship i have, i find reasons why they are angry at me/don't want to be my friend/see me as a chore. I have to fight the urge to press that big red 'self destruct' button all too often, and the irony of this is that it is this behavior, this moping, this melo-dramaticism, this being miserable for no good reason, that makes me a lot less fun to be around and probably makes people wish they weren't my friend/didn't have to put up with me.

The most frustrating thing for me is that despite this awareness of my flaws, and the determination to change that it leads to, i find myself falling irresistably back into bad habits.

However every so often i manage to break free of the idiocy that consumes me most of the time, and then i see the world and my life a lot clearer. I see the many reasons i have to be happy and suddenly i am lifted.

All kinds of things can provoke these realisations. It can be the lyrics of a song, the plot of a film or book, the weather, a good run or a brilliant guitar riff. But the most common cause is time spent with my friends, the people i will be eternally grateful to, for the simple fact that they still choose to spend time with me, despite the fact that i must be bordering on unbearable half the time. I'm not gonna list the various people, but i hope you know who you are, and i try my best to show you when i can.

I'm not entirely sure why i've typed this out, i don't know whether it's a confession, an apology, an explanation or just yet another random stream of thought that i wanted to let out into the world rather than keep pent up.

I don't believe for a moment that i'm unique in this, or that i have more problems than most people, but i felt like writing out some random paragraphs to express the self-reflectiveness i've been going through.

"It's just a story"

I wrote this a while ago, but i decided to start this blog to post some of the more coherent stuff i write in a place where other people might see it, and this is a piece i was always pretty pleased with.

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When something matters to someone, like a book or a film or a tv show, and they get worked up about it, become passionate about it, one of the most annoying things it is possible for someone to say is

"It's just a story."

They say it to rubbish the passion the person feels, to mock them for having it mean so much, dismiss it as unimportant because it is fiction rather than fact. The biggest flaw with this is that they are suggesting that stories are somehow inferior and don't matter.

But stories do matter. they can change a persons outlook, change their day/week/month/year. Whether it's a relationship on a TV show, or the narrative of a book, or a dramatic moment in a play or film, it can matter. It can affect you deep down in a way that reality rarely manages to. We live most of our lives in relative mundanity, and there's nothing wrong with this, but stories offer an escape, a vicarious thrill, allowing us to dream of a life different to the one that faces you when you open your eyes in the morning. We can lose ourselves in a story, care about the characters with a degree of passion that takes us by surprise. We love them, we hate them, we pity them, we judge them for their mistakes and praise them for their successes. They can move us to act, move us to take a step we might not have taken without their inspiration. Stories can provoke a person to realise their feelings for someone, take a risk they wouldn't have taken, stand up for what they believe is right. fiction it may be, but it sometimes can mean more to us than fact, the novelists, screenwriters and playwrights understand this, they are performing a valuable service, because the world would be a much darker place without stories to brighten it.

And there's also the stories told by word of mouth, the 'you'll never guess what happened', the 'i can't believe they're doing this', the 'we have to change this', the 'and then they did' stories which are passed from one person to another, whether simply told by one friend to another as they walk to school, focussing on last nights 'fun' or told by a political speaker to the masses in front of them, provoking, inspiring and challenging them to believe. They're all stories. From the "Well last night, i was in plug and you'll never guess who i saw kissing..." story to the "I have a dream" story, we cherish these little insights into another persons life, these little escapes from our own.

Look at it this way, we've come a long way in the last 2000 years, we've moved from caves to houses, we have cars, planes, computers, TVs, we've moved beyond waving sticks at each other and we have a much wider choice in fashion, but one thing hasn't changed. we still gather around the proverbial fire to listen to a story.

So to sum up this little ramble, stories matter and don't let anyone make you believe anything else.