I love music. Anyone who knows me, or certainly anyone who has spent time reading this blog, probably does not need to be told this. But I love music in a way that few things end up being loved in this life. Music as an artform is transcendent in a way that no other medium is. The opening notes of a song can immediately make you feel powerful emotions, conjure vivid memories. Lyrics can tell stories that we’ve always known in our heart but never had the words to fully understand. And music is an infinite echo, stretching both into the past and future, singing back to those who once gave it new shape and significance, while playing the heartbeat that will give life to the artists that hear it years from now. There is a special kind of embarrassment reserved for hearing somebody say “music is life”, but as time passes, music slowly creeps deeper and deeper into my life in a way that I think my life would be unrecognizable without it. I love music, but I didn’t always love it exactly like this.
Today, as I turn 30, I’m thinking about music as both one of the greatest constants and indicators of change in my life. My relationship to it has evolved over and over, and yet it remains a foundational passion; a source of happiness, wonder, perspective, and learning. I hope and expect this relationship to keep changing into the future, after all, nothing ever stays the same. But from here, somewhere in the middle, I’m taking a look back to see what music has taught me over the years, 5 years at a time. I recognize this is probably the most self-indulgent writing I’ve undertaken (and that’s saying something), but hey, it’s my birthday, isn’t it?
0 – 5: Music is full of joy
Whenever I’m asked about my childhood, I always lead with an important disclaimer: I am very lucky. I grew up with, and still have, an incredible family. My wonderful parents and older sister remain a cornerstone in my life, and people that I have lots of fun spending time with (they also read everything I write on this blog, gracias). I grew up happy, and I lived in a happy home, and I remember that home full of music. Every Saturday morning while my mom made breakfast, my dad would pull a CD or cassette from his collection and hit play. Things are hazy this far back, but the singing and dancing still shines through, so does the music. Those first exposures to Cat Stevens and Tracy Chapman and The Beatles stay with me today, as does the notion that a home is not whole without music filling its rooms and people humming along. To sing was to smile, to sing was to share a moment of joy. Music is full of joy, and nowhere in my mind is this idea better crystallized than in the call and response of “Hello, Goodbye” during bath time, where a shrill, toneless chorus of yes’s and no’s from my sister and I sits happily in the earliest limits of my memory. I cannot recall anything surrounding this memory, perhaps an even stronger reminder that the joy of music transcends our very comprehension of it or the world it lives in.
5 – 10: Everybody loves music
There’s a lot to love about our current ability to listen to anything we want so easily. At the press of a button you can access nearly the entire history of recorded music, and you never have to hear a Top 40 hit if you don’t want to. But, as imperfect as it was, there was a real beauty to being at the whims of the radio. Every morning our mom would wait for the school bus with us in the car, and for a few minutes every day, radio was a brief window into the culture around us. It’s not that listening to radio was inherently good, or that I loved the music that I heard, but the communal practice of tuning in meant sharing some common ground with people you didn’t even know, and exposing yourself to music you maybe wouldn’t hear at home, even if it was the biggest hits. Between songs, callers might chime in to give their hot take on last night’s episode of American Idol (yes, we voted for Kelly), and though it was just a silly show, being “in” on it was an important lesson: everybody loves music, everybody likes having things in common, and everybody likes being able to turn up the volume when a banger comes on.
10 – 15: Music is made by people
A few things happen all at once here, but most important of them all: I get way too into Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. I sink countless hours into playing a fake guitar and in the process inadvertently am exposed to a wide swath of rock history for the first time. Rock music, while always the probable path for me, becomes the most important pillar for my understanding of music as a whole. I eventually pick up a real guitar and never put it down, beginning a lifelong connection to playing music with my own two hands. I go to my first concert, an adrenaline-filled Metallica show in a sold out stadium with 65,000 psyched fans (shoutout to my dad for signing up for this nightmare). Me and my friends start our own band, we suck, but we’re 13 so we’re actually pretty good. For the first time I truly understand that music is made by people, real people. The legends you build in your head and hear in your headphones are real, and they’re standing right over there playing a show. They’re not so different from me, we’re both just people who love music, and we’re both in a band. And though dreams of being a guitar hero have long subsided, that idea remains with me: musicians were not born legends, they were once just a group of passionate kids with wacky ideas that managed to strike a new chord. The power to create music is in all of us if we try.
15 – 20: Music speaks to you
This is a special time for me, where my music taste really begins to take shape. This is probably true for most people around this age, since you begin to have full agency over what you’re listening to, as well as meeting lots of people going through the same thing. Luckily, I made friends with some people that put me on to music that I really connected with. The indie wave of the 2010s hit me hard (as did a cringe-worthy obsession with mustaches :{D ), but music from this era still sits among my favorites, some of the first to make me feel like it was made for me, something I could passionately claim as my own. Maybe it’s that at this age we all start to feel more complex emotions, but I began to really hear something special in what musicians were saying, like they were telling me the truth of things I had never considered. More and more I found myself learning that music is powerful and that music speaks to you. It speaks to deep parts of you that you don’t understand, but through music you sometimes begin to. To this day, the Fleet Foxes line still rattles in my head: “after some thinking, I think I’d rather be a functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me.” I was 16 when I first heard those words, and something about them pierced through to my core. I still am not sure exactly what great machinery I help turn, but I am convinced that trying to lead a good life in support of those around me makes the world a better place, now more than ever.
20 – 25: Music is there when you need it
In the post-college lull, on the precipice of adulthood, I was feeling a little lost. Struggling to find a job and feeling stagnated, the uncertain path of the future weighed on my mind. I started hiking, the effort of climbing up the steep trail at Tarrywile Park was a soothing remedy to my idle energy. One of my first outings there was after a mild snowstorm, making the trail a bit more treacherous than usual. There’s a particularly steep stretch about a quarter mile long, and every step up that section was a battle, slipping and falling at least a dozen times. I’ll never forget going up that hill; through my headphones, it was the first time I heard the post-rock classic Ágætis Byrjun, and in that moment, it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard. There was something mythical about it, something that conveyed sadness and yearning, and yet it possessed a sound of triumph. It was exactly what I needed in that moment, making my struggle to the top feel like a much-needed good omen for the future. Music is there when you need it, and be it in aimlessness, or heartbreak, or grief, music finds a way to refract your emotions into something meaningful, something that gives you hope or gives you consolation. Some people say they have a hard time listening to songs they associate with tough times, but I’ve always felt happy to go back to them. They feel like old friends, and I’m grateful to them for helping me through to a better tomorrow.
25 – 30: I don’t know anything about music
Fast forwarding to the present, I’ve never been more passionate about music. I’ve spent the last 6 or 7 years listening to every album and genre I can get my hands on, obsessively building a mental map of music history that’s left me more appreciative than ever about the infinite possibilities of sound. I’ve amassed a collection of over 200 records old and new, I’ve gone to dozens of shows and experienced the vast array of emotions live music can provide. I started writing this blog, mostly for myself, but in some small hopes that it might spark the same kind of passion I have for music in someone else. I’ve never understood more about music, and yet, more than ever, I feel like I don’t know anything about music. If music is a hallway full of doors, each one you open reveals five more behind it, an infinite maze with no beginning or end. Every year I open more of these doors, and my hunger to keep exploring grows, but at the same time, I begin to understand the small fraction of the maze I’ve really seen, and even begin to wonder if I’ve seen the rooms I’ve traveled through as they truly are. But I think the beauty of music is that as time passes, all the rooms and hallways look a bit different, and in that sense, each chapter of your life allows you to see them for the first time, a fresh perspective on something you thought you understood. As I look to the future, I know music will continue to give me new understandings of life, and vice versa. I will change, music will too, but one thing likely won’t: I love music.
Listening Now 