About this blog:
I blog on random Pop Culture subjects. I also post Top 13 Lists. I could do a cliched Top 10 like everyone else, but then I'd be just like everyone else.


Friday, May 28, 2010

“Music Is My Escape”

Music is my escape, my second salvation, the soundtrack to my life. It drowns out all the drama, the strife, the lies, the incoherent noise, and the inconvenience of being alive. I don't know what I'd do without it. I'd probably lose the slight grasp my whitening knuckles still hold onto that ever-elusive sanity by an ironically proverbial thread.

Through music we can release our need for anger, violence, pain, depression, insanity, breakdown, breakup, breaking things, whatever, so that we don't have to go through with any of it within the cramped confines of reality, in which there would be punishable and regrettable consequences for our actions.

Music keeps many of us alive through relationship problems, family problems, job or school problems, social and romantic failings, fair weather friends, fading confidence, festering ennui, infectious apathy, and terminal boredom.

Currently, I mostly listen to 80’s 90's Alternative Rock, which brings back so many memories of the great times and the great people of the "good old days", back before most of you knew these bands, and I couldn't get enough of them. These are songs we made DJs play at dances, even though we were the only few who knew of them, and were the only ones dancing to them. These are the songs we knew by heart, and passionately screamed out the words to at the top of our young lungs, while cruising around in our first cars, carefree and alive. We were all still sane back then. We had yet to be tainted by this world, because we were above this world, elevated by our own minds, our own revolutions, our own voices, ringing out amid the silence of a world stuck in it's own self pity, and loathsome denial. It was a world more like "Lord of the Flies" than "Utopia". A world of metaphysical cannibalism and masochism, swallowed like a pill, chased down with propaganda and public service announcements, sugarcoated with sitcoms and slapstick, while distracting us with The Cold War, The Smurfs, and Count Chocula.

The music got us through so much. Lyrics we could relate to, sounds we could rock out to, songs that reminded us we were still alive and kicking, songs that reminded us that we didn't have to "fit in", that it was alright to be different, it was human to feel, it was normal to hurt, it was life to struggle, it was required to be imperfect. Music that helped shape the identity of a generation no one cared about, a generation pushed aside, a generation not taken seriously, a generation called lazy and unimaginative just because we had new conveniences never available before, conveniences they sold to us, a generation not allowed to have it's own culture, or signature, or even a proper non-generic name. But we were more than just the kids of the Baby Boomers. We were more than just the children of hippies. We took their generic, patronizing label of Generation X, and waved it proudly as a banner, an anthem, a red badge of courage, a fulfillment of their mindless stereotyping, and yet an identity all our own, by our definition, on our terms.

I don't sleep. Music is more therapeutic than sleep. It all begins and ends with music. If you're still reading this, it must mean something to you too.

©2010 Denim McDemus

No comments:

Post a Comment