Music is my boyfriend

I've been thinking lately about how I grew to be enamored with music; how that relationship evolved. It's become such a big part of my life, such an important part and I often need to recount the journey.

When I was growing up music was much more than background noise to me. I would constantly hear the voices of Robert Plant, Roger Waters and Neil Young, poetic and raw, filling the rooms of our house, telling stories about Chelsea mornings and the earth moving under their feet. Later, in my teenage years I'd hear those familiar songs on the radio and my friends would laugh that I'd know every word, every guitar string strummed ... it felt like home to hear this chord or that hook. I'd remember the watermarked album covers in my dad's collection, strewn across the shag carpeting like lily pads on water.

This music stayed with me. Like the lines of poetry, songs have always stuck with me, the meaningful ones adhering somewhere inside, the less meaningful ones falling away through the years. And to date, I've built this abounding library of songs that correspond with particular moments in my life.

"A Long December" instantly pulls me back to high school, sitting cross-legged on the floor of my room, reading over that handwritten note asking me to Prom. "Whole Lotta Love" sends me to my basement, five years old, frenetically dancing with my sister. And Snow Patrol's "How To Be Dead" puts me right back in the middle of winter. Into the middle of bad memories. Of frozen feelings. And those moments have been stored for me, as if etched into the records themselves, released with a touch of the needle to the vinyl. I can keep them as close as a bookshelf away.

When I listen to the music of the 60's and 70's ...it breaks my soul that I'll never truly be able to capture that experience and it's something I think I chase. It's a romantic idea, changing history through music, through a movement. I don't see that happening with my generation. I guess I'm somewhat envious. I don't know if I will ever be a part of a galvanizing movement like that in my time. And I sure as hell don't have enough talent to start one of my own.

The history of music...how the trite, safe, homogenized music of the 50's evolved into the politically charged, inconsistently mellow music of the 60's into the truly innovative and, in my opinion, the most exciting time for music, the art-rock turned punk, kick you in the pants music of the 70's and early 80's. How the turmoil of whatever era we entered into shaped and paralleled the music that emerged from the underbelly of this war, or that recession. The urge to say SOMETHING ...and that made a serious impression on me.

I can recall specific moments that changed the way I looked at music, felt about music, what I believed music could do, be, change. I guess that's what captivated me about the whole thing--how different it was from everything else. I am attracted to that quality, that darker, mysterious side of things. The side left unexplored. The side people are afraid to explore.

It's because a group of people, a culture of people, had the desire to break the mold, even if it proved unpopular. That to me, is real courage, real risk. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't admire that with every ounce of my being ... and if everyday I didn't wish I could be a part of something like that.

I guess I just grew up in the wrong generation.