MusicBoxer.com

I’m going to try. I’m not exactly at my best when I’m trying to explain myself but I’m going to try and answer the bigger question – the one behind all the little questions. I’m going to try to explain why I regularly drive two and a half hours to see a concert only to turn around and drive two and a half hours home after it’s over, getting in well after 1 a.m., when I have to be at work bright and early the next day. I’m going to explain why I buy an album on iTunes and then track down and buy a physical copy of the album. I’m going to explain why I fly thousands of miles to see concerts by bands I’ve seen (at least) 30 times before. I’m going to explain why I listen to the same song, on repeat, every single night while I fall asleep. I’m going to explain why I’ve written and recoded over a 100 songs that no one will ever hear. I’m going to explain why I’ve had the bass and treble clef permanently tattooed onto my skin. I’m going to explain why I spend a lot of my free time developing and writing a music website that no one reads.

I’m going to explain all that by saying that music means more to me than anyone could ever possibly understand. I see more beauty and passion in music than I see anywhere else. Since I was a kid music has been the constant and it’s been more than just a soundtrack. As I moved from place to place, from phase to phase, from relationship to relationship, music has been the cocoon. I’ve anchored so much of who I am through music that without it I couldn’t imagine the person I’d have become – nor could I even guarantee that I’d still be around. My memories, my emotions and my dreams have become so intertwined with music that the most skilled surgeon wouldn’t be able to separate them.

Smell is supposed to be the sense most directly tied to memory but in my broken brain, hearing has always been much more powerful. Catching the faintest hint of melody from “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” in a noisy restaurant is enough to send me back to when I was seven, watching as the lights on our old record player danced to the Beatles. As the record would play, colored lights on the front of the jukebox-like record player would blink on and off adding an extra element of awe to the music as interpreted by a seven-year-old. I’d sit in front of the record player for hours with my action figures. Combining the music being played to the action taking place in my head as the lights provided the fireworks.

As I got older my dad (and occasionally my mom) would play the “name the band” game with us kids as we drove from football practice to grandparent’s house to softball game. We, the kids, would guess (sometimes wildly and sometimes wildly on purpose) hoping to make our parents proud. All these years later and we still play the game although we kids are much better at it than we use to be and have pretty much turned the tables on everything released after 1980. Music was a way that we connected to the people that meant the most to us.

For my 12th birthday, my mom bought me a portable cassette player. It still rates as one of my most cherished presents. I immediately, or as immediately as a 12-year-old with no method of transportation of his own could, went to the mall and spent most of my birthday money on cassettes. The first two albums I ever purchased were DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince’s He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper and INXS’ Listen Like Thieves. I must have listened to each of those 100 times before the end of the week. Suddenly music became something entirely new. At that moment I was in control. Music didn’t come from what my parent’s or older brother wanted to listen to. Now it was mine.

In my early teens, my older brother tried to teach me how to play guitar but I was a poor student and he was rather impatient. But something did stick after those lessons and as the next couple years passed, the desire to make my own music grew. In high school I bought a bass guitar and started playing in bands – one of which was a Christian band. I didn’t realize it was a Christian band for the longest time. Or maybe I did and I just didn’t want to admit it because I was in a good band, having a good time, with a good friend of mine. But eventually I couldn’t reconcile the fact that all of our songs were about Jesus, we practiced in a church and only played at house parties for church members against the fact that I was atheist. Fortunately the band and I agreed that perhaps having an atheist bass player wasn’t the best for a Christian band. But with this band and the others that followed music again made a shift in my brain and it became something I could do myself. I could experience it from the other side. I could now create it myself and make it go where I wanted it to go. Music became an outlet for me to say things I wasn’t always able to say – despite the fact that I’ve never once written lyrics.

In college my music obsession took another turn. I became a professional music journalist. I started sharing everything I knew and loved about music with others even though most people could care less about what I had to say. I was able to meet the people who made the music that meant the most to me and I was forced to listen to music that I would never have picked up on my own. Music had been a world that I was always orbiting and never really embedded in, even when I was making my own. But now I was at the center. Music began to flow through me and I was more than willing to let anyone know what I knew and let them hear what I heard. I wanted to share it all. Not because I wanted people to recognize me as some cool member of some cool, exclusive club, but because I wanted everyone to see and experience all the beautiful things that I was experiencing.

Now my appetite for music, both listening and experiencing, is insatiable. I can’t go more than a couple days without the desire to hear something new boiling over. In that regard, MySpace has become my gateway. I follow link after link until I come across something I like. Finding a new, good band is like meeting a new beautiful new friend. I want to spend a lot of time with them at first – learning everything I can. I want to get to know them and I want to hear everything they’ve got. But when I’m done I don’t toss them away. I add them to the rotation. I add the music to my collection and start associating it to new memories.

But with this all laid out, I realize that music doesn’t make me a better person. Music has defined so much and occupies so much of me that I find it almost impossible to relate to people other than through music. Every relationship I’ve ever been able to maintain has been done so using music. Music is how I meet people. Music is what I talk about when I talk to people. Music is the only thing that can draw me out of my shell to engage with someone else. Without music I rarely know what to say and I almost never say the right thing. Music has become the only thing I really understand and without it, I get lost easily.

Music for me isn’t about having something to make me different. It’s not about allowing me to be a part of a special little clique. It’s not about a cause to get behind. It’s not about being into something before anyone else. It’s not about having something that’s mine and mine alone. It’s not about being part of a family. It’s not about liking the stuff I’m supposed to like in order to fit in with any specific group.

Music is just who I am… that’s all.

That’s why I regularly drive two and a half hours to see a concert only to turn around and drive two and a half hours home after it’s over, getting in well after 1 a.m., when I have to be at work bright and early the next day. That’s why I buy an album on iTunes and then track down and buy a physical copy of the album. That’s why I fly thousands of miles to see concerts by bands I’ve seen (at least) 30 times before. That’s why I listen to the same song, on repeat, every single night while I fall asleep. That’s why I’ve written and recoded over a 100 songs that no one will ever hear. That’s why I’ve had the bass and treble clef permanently tattooed onto my skin.

And that’s why I spend a lot of my free time developing and writing a music website that no one reads.