Now you want to try a life of sin and you want to be down with the down and in. (Day 31)

A friend of mine once told me, "The music you listen to is destroying your life."

She didn't say it jokingly. To be quite honest, it was during a pretty intense conversation after I'd just delivered probably one of the most ignorant statements that could ever have been said. Ever.

But I've thought about that line so much ever since she's said it. I wonder quite often what that exactly means. I'd say normally whoever it was that would say something as ambiguous as that to me was full of shit, but the truth is...she's probably right. I say probably because I'm still unclear as to what that means, but she's...well, to be quite honest she's smarter than me. A lot smarter than me.

But after that I analyzed it. I still do, often because I'm neurotic and I never let anything go.

Music hits me hard. As it does with most people, admittedly, but through every twist and turn in my life theres been a verse and a chorus waiting to help transcribe what I was dealing with when my own lexicon had slighted me yet again. Sometimes the only truth left to learn is from someone else who's pelting out word soup to your ears.

It's part of why I've always liked the blues, or so much of the modern punk/country mash-up's that happen now, or bands like Hot Water Music and Lucero where you just listen to either Ben Nichols or Chuck Ragan and you hear the aching in their voice. I'd almost rather hear a voice that sounds like it went ten rounds on the losing end with a cement mixer than something smooth and postured, because the emotion thats in those broken voices seem so brutally honest, so anthemic and anecdotal that it almost feels like clairvoyance on those nights when you don't want to move, and you lay down in a dark room and just listen for hours.

I relate more to three chords and books than I do to most people, and I've felt like an outsider because of that.

I mean, you listen to Johnny Cash on songs like "Folsom Prison Blues" or any Otis Redding song, and you automatically know it isn't pre-manufactured. That theres a reason why thats being sung.

But nowadays I find myself thinking about what she said. "The music you listen to is destroying your life" and what if shes right about that? What if all along instead of looking to something else for some kind of answer I relied too much on whats basically an aural drug?

I'm the rare type of person that can listen to a single song on repeat for hours and not tire of it whatsoever. "The Blues, Mary" by Brian Fallon is a perfect example of this too.

But instead of really ever coping with what happens, I plug in and tune right out. When Weapon X left I listened to the song "97" on repeat for about a week, and if you're not privy to that song, well the best I can really say is that maybe wasn't the most healthy song to listen too hundreds of times while drinking hobo wine and cheap beer and not eating.

I want to stay true to myself and my belief system, but so much of both are deeply tied into places of music I'm not sure I ever really fit in too well with in the first place. But it's always felt like "when I've got the music, I've got a place to go" as opposed to just actually listening to my surroundings and paving a way that route instead.

Another friend used to say I had a "Holden Caufield complex" which is pretty much the Peter Pan Syndrome, only less androgynous. I see now, years later, what she was talking around. I stick around certain situations almost as long as the average punk song (2:30-3:00 minutes long) and then split. "Never say good bye; when you say good bye you start missing everyone". I'm terrified of growing up, but when I think about it...youth wasn't exactly spectacular to begin with. So why hang onto something that sucked, and try to prolong it? Is the fear of the unknown really all that better.

I booked it and ran at the first sign of danger so many times, I couldn't truly tell you the outcome of so many things I was apart of. And now theres a lot of question marks.

But the music, the books...all of that. Thats what I relate too because I don't know anything else.

How many days, hours, weeks and months have I really wracked up running around in circles like a chicken with its head cut off to some band that barely knows how to play their instruments? I don't know if I'll ever know the answer to that question. And maybe the chicken with its head cut off is the most appropriate description for me in general. Every miles I ran I always somehow wound up right back where I started from.

Maybe the music I listen to really is destroying my life.


Until tomorrow.