Music

I love music, more than I could ever possibly put into words. There are songs that make me cry, songs that touch my very soul, songs that I can actually feel. They reach in and wrap themselves around my heart, they slip into my blood and course through my veins, and their power overwhelms. It's crazy, really. I don't know anyone else that is this effected by music, but I am.

I've also never talked about it. To anyone.

I can't explain it. In some cases it's the lyrics, but usually it's the music itself. Sometimes it's both. There's no specific genre, and it doesn't matter what the song is about.

Sometimes my brain actually gives the song an entirely new meaning. I would share some examples, but honestly you'd probably just think I was crazy. They make no sense. Well, they do in a few cases, in the ones where I've tied a memory to the song and it's taken that on as a meaning.

That wasn't a very good explanation of what I was trying to say. It's not the meaning that has changed, but the picture association. You have to understand that my brain is very visual, everything I hear, smell, feel, has a picture to go with it. Sometimes it's what happened the first time I heard/smelled/felt it, other times it's a special or memorable time I heard/smelled/felt it, but in some cases my brain just goes and does it's own thing...

I'll share one that goes with a normal song so you get the idea. The first time I remember hearing Ozzy's 'Mama I'm Coming Home' was in my brother's Jeep. I was five or six, and we were on the frontage road, about to get on the expressway and go to the mall. My brother was driving, my mom was in the passenger seat, and I was in the back. And that's what I see when I hear that song, I can see my brother and my mom, the road winding in front of us, the dead grass, the palm trees...

Another example is 'Romeo & Juliet' by the Dire Straits. Even though I'd heard it many times before, and I've heard it hundreds of times since, the picture that I associate with it is me, huddled in the bathtub in a completely dark house, on the 4th of July in 2002, trying to drown out the sound of popping fireworks, crying, and having the most heartbreaking conversation of my young life. Granted that was like the worst song timing in the history of all the times that song has been played, but I love it nonetheless.

It's an exquisite feeling really, though, to have such vivid memories. It's almost akin to being able to control my dreams. I can listen to a song and be transported to an entirely different place, sights and smells from years ago suddenly come flooding back and my heart flip-flops with the sudden onset of emotion. I'm amazed, at times, by how I can be so deep in depression, so broken, so sad, but I listen to a song I love, a song with happiness attached to it, and for just a few minutes that perfect love will fill my heart and eclipse everything else.