Music and me (an essay, I guess)
Monday, July 30th, 2007 00:30![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sofiavioletI remember it as through a window fogged over: newly sixteen and standing in the tool shed behind a friend's boyfriend's house, listening to their band. And in an indoor soccer arena, once, and several times in some old building whose original purpose I could never figure out (I only saw it after dark), which had no stage, just a patch of astroturf.
I perched in the back seat of her car, her hand out the windows holding a cigarette, a different punk cd in rotation every time we felt like it. I was deliriously happy that such awesome people thought little ol' me was cool enough to be included, and sometimes I think I might have been in love with all three of them.
Then they broke up (my friend and her boyfriend, and also the band), and I went to another school, and that was the end of that part of my life.
***
Then, there were the Libertines, less than six months later. I owe them a lot. I remember, fuzzily because the memory can block out acute misery as well as physical agony, being seventeen and sitting behind my boyfriend in math class, bored and depressed as fuck, taking shitty notes in black ballpoint. And eventually, I'd give up on trig because my mind was a wreck, and I'd start writing on my left hand and forearm. Lyrics, sometimes, and always always always libertine like a tattoo.
For six of the worst months of my life, they were everything to me, and I'm lucky to have had them. Not that they saved me from suicide, exactly, because I'm pretty sure I'm 100% incapable of killing myself no matter how much I want to. But they gave me enough bright moments during that time that I was more-or-less okay with waking up alive every morning. They got into me heart and soul, and I've never regretted it. (Got my sanity back on a temporary basis, after all, and a few half-decent poems too.)
***
And no matter how intense the high of my time being "with the band" nor the paradoxical low at a time when everything in my life should have been great, I'm kind of thankful that I can just sit back and listen, and be a devoted fan if I want, without needing it so badly.
Because as much as I love music, I love my independence a little more.
I perched in the back seat of her car, her hand out the windows holding a cigarette, a different punk cd in rotation every time we felt like it. I was deliriously happy that such awesome people thought little ol' me was cool enough to be included, and sometimes I think I might have been in love with all three of them.
Then they broke up (my friend and her boyfriend, and also the band), and I went to another school, and that was the end of that part of my life.
Then, there were the Libertines, less than six months later. I owe them a lot. I remember, fuzzily because the memory can block out acute misery as well as physical agony, being seventeen and sitting behind my boyfriend in math class, bored and depressed as fuck, taking shitty notes in black ballpoint. And eventually, I'd give up on trig because my mind was a wreck, and I'd start writing on my left hand and forearm. Lyrics, sometimes, and always always always libertine like a tattoo.
For six of the worst months of my life, they were everything to me, and I'm lucky to have had them. Not that they saved me from suicide, exactly, because I'm pretty sure I'm 100% incapable of killing myself no matter how much I want to. But they gave me enough bright moments during that time that I was more-or-less okay with waking up alive every morning. They got into me heart and soul, and I've never regretted it. (Got my sanity back on a temporary basis, after all, and a few half-decent poems too.)
And no matter how intense the high of my time being "with the band" nor the paradoxical low at a time when everything in my life should have been great, I'm kind of thankful that I can just sit back and listen, and be a devoted fan if I want, without needing it so badly.
Because as much as I love music, I love my independence a little more.
