Before my brain and writing atrophies....

Yes, it has been a very long time since I've written here and for some reason I felt the need to do some more writing about music.

I have opinions, like everyone does, about a lot of things. I have opinions about politics, religion, ethics, movies, books, sports, food...basically everything you can have an opinion on, I have an opinion on it. And yet, I find that most of my opinionated brain power is dedicated to expressing my opinions, thoughts, feelings, etc about music in its various forms. In the grand scheme of life itself I know a lot of people will debate really how important it is to spend so much brain power diving headlong into your favorite songs, and really dissecting them from a musical, lyrical, visual, and emotional standpoint.

I can never get my head around the concept of someone who enjoys music in a purely background noise manner, or whose only connection to a favorite song is a pleasing sound or a danceable beat. There's nothing wrong with it but it's something that I can't ever bring myself to understand. For me, this stopped being the case I'd say a good 15 years ago, and it became the focal point of my life, where I would make sure that every night I would be able to listen to my little red stereo with the hope to hear my favorite songs. I suppose this all-consuming rock and roll obsession started from a desire to hear songs I thought just sounded cool- it truly became so much more than that in my life.

Thankfully I started at a young age and the music was already there when I started growing up. Growing up in white picket fence suburbia there were all sorts of expectations on everyone, and as those of you who know me already have learned I rejected those expectations, for one reason or another. Or they rejected me, I don't know. Regardless, whenever shitty things in life happen we turn to certain things for comfort or explanation or just to make sense of things. Some turn to religion, and that never made sense to me. Raised Catholic, I never got any sense of comfort from "religion" or "faith" in a "god figure"; scripture passages I don't think were written for awkward teenagers trying to navigate hostile environments like gym class, school dances, breakups, struggles with identity, etc. etc. What always made sense to me was playing, and listening to, music. Comfort came from music in so many different ways. In high school when I realized I had no interest in sports or the big popularity contest that high school was, I took comfort listening to Social Distortion. I took comfort in hearing that Mike Ness felt the same way when he was my age. When I was fed up with the sociopolitical apathy of my high school peers, I took comfort in knowing that there were artists who were just as angry and were talking about it. Joe Strummer and Zach De La Rocha validated my then-misguided anger. When I struggled with peer alienation and felt out of step with most people I knew, Dropkick Murphys gave me hope that some day, somewhere, I would find friends who would pick me up when I was down, and make me want to keep going at things full speed ahead. When I was overcome with bitterness and hurting, music by Jawbreaker told me that the same shit has happened to other people before, everywhere, and that it was normal and okay for me to feel slighted and angry, yet confused. I was able to find meaning in all of those songs that struck me in the right place at the right time, and somehow being able to relate to these musicians, I found a comfort that transformed into a strength, an inspiration. If there's one thing that ties all these artists together, named and unnamed, it's that at some point they were out of step with their peers, and struggling to find their own meaning in the events of their lives. They needed a way to make sense of what they saw and felt.

I'm fortunate in that I can make my own music, and it serves the same purpose now as all those songs in the past did, and that many of them still do.

Inspiration to write comes at the stupidest times...