Music in Me

If you were to ask me where my love of music began, I’d have to say in the womb. From the beginning I was surrounded by music although neither of my parents were musicians. I suppose most of the credit should go to my mother for putting the music bug in me. At no stage of my young life can I recall music not playing in our home. At first it was whatever was playing on the radio that filled the house. In later years as my parents grew more religious the music changed, but there was still music.

My musical tastes run the gambit of music from my early exposure to popular hits, from rock and country, to my indoctrination into religious and southern gospel music. But even listing those genres doesn’t cover the variety of my musical taste. I often find myself laughing at the algorithmic programming of Amazon and Spotify when they try and narrow in on my musical taste. Simply because my musical taste it can vary with the wind. As my wife can tell you, one night bluegrass might be pouring out my earbuds and the next the noise of Ornette Coleman, as she prefers to call his music.

My reason for bringing this up is to demonstrate how things like music, art, or sports are anchors that ground us to the human experience. Like my Uncle Carl once told me, “everyone needs a hobby.” In my life music is the glue that grounds me and enriches my existence.

In the recent past, as things in my life were unraveling and I was questioning my sanity, one of the cures I was given was a drug that controlled the fear and anxiety I was experiencing. After absorbing those medications into my system they did help control the panic. But that come at a great cost.

Over the years I was prescribed this medication I slowly lost my emotional compass. My emotions become mute I couldn’t feel much excitement or sadness. It slowly robbed me of the richness of human emotion. Of those feelings that make us uniquely human and truly alive.

For a long period, music wasn’t a part of my life anymore. The music I listened to and created was no longer an anchor that grounded me to my emotions. The medication even took me as far as no longer being able to write. It may have solved the problem of my panic, but it took from me the freeing passion of words and music.  

It took nearly ten years for me to realize how much I missed music and the written word. As the medication nailed down my panicked torment, deep within me I realized that this was no way to live. So unwisely I stopped taking the medication. Over the course of the next few weeks my emotions were spinning to say the least. When I listened to music the emotions would overwhelm me like a teary-eyed teenage girl. I had to literally learn to experience my emotions all over again.

At the present it has been a few years since I unwisely weaned myself from that medication. Since then the road I’ve traveled hasn’t all that smooth. From the rush of incoming emotion came the return of the anxiety and fear I felt so long ago. But this time I fought these demons with a new understanding of who I am and what to do. Now as I fight this battle everyday with myself, the deep love I have for music and word have become valuable tools. Tools that help me express the emotions that are deep inside me. So by looking at them clearly, I can better define and love who I am.