I’ve been busy lately. Unlike most lucky folks out there, my semester has not yet ended, and I still have two final exams to go before I start my grueling summer (2 semesters of physics in 10 weeks, what was I thinking?). In addition to school, I’ve had a lot of drama in my personal life, and the stress keeps building up and doubling back onto itself again, and it’s just been this big old fortress of aggravation in my head lately. So my blogging priority has slip, but my love for and dependence on this band never falter, not at all.
I wonder, sometimes, if other people out there could possibly love music as much as I do. Because I feel like, if they do, how do they ever get anything done? Some days, like today, all I want to do is lock myself away with a pair of headphones, and I want to dance in front of my mirror and belt this shit out Christina Aguilera style, complete with beckoning hand gestures and head tosses (you should see me rocking out in my car, I’m a force of fuckin’ nature). I just want to inch the volume up, click by click, until I’m only noise, until everything in the universe is just soundwaves. Everything else goes away, and I am lyrics and guitars and snares and all of that shit that magically blends together, all those tiny little puzzle pieces that snap into place and make a song. Music isn’t that shit they play in the elevators or the supermarkets, music isn’t something that goes in the background of an iPod commercial, music is a total-body experience, I hear it and I think it and I feel it and I am it.
And I didn’t feel this way about music before I was a GGD fan. I liked music just as much as I liked any of the other trappings of pop culture, I liked music the way I liked magazines and tv shows and the mall. And something changed, and I don’t know why. I don’t know why it was this band that shook something loose inside my head and go, “Oh, so that’s what the big deal is.” I don’t know why they were the gateway drug for me, but they were, and my life is irreversibly different because of it. And sometimes, I just want to sit John Rzeznik down and say, “LOOK AT ME, because I am this person because of you, and if there is anything about me that is good, it’s because of you.” And I think there are things about me that are good. I’m a good writer, and I’m a nice person, and I have all these weird reserves of passion inside myself that perhaps come bubbling out at inappropriate moments, but I think I am experiencing life in a way that a lot of people don’t get to. I don’t take the most risks, I don’t have the most friends, but I feel things so very deeply, I am so sensitive to changes in my environment, to the nuances inherent to a thing that it make it beautiful, that make it real. “I am this way because of you.” I don’t know that you can really say such a thing to a person, I don’t know that it’s ever really appropriate, but I do know that it’s true.
What can you say to your hero? Confronted with him, face to face, ten seconds or less, what can you really say that even touches upon what you mean? I’ve mentioned before that I don’t want to do the meet and greets, and I still feel that way. Because I am special, and my story is unique, and my feelings are personal, and there is no way to get that across in ten seconds. Not enough time, not even words, and it isn’t worth it unless I get to spell out all of it, every shitty situation this band helped me through, every time I wanted to give up and couldn’t, didn’t, somehow just held it all together until I got to here, where I can be coherent and vocal and grateful. And would he even care? Can I even be selfish enough to expect him to care? No, really, I can’t.
I don’t know if people feel this like I do, and I don’t know if I’m even capable of talking about this without sounding like I’m severely fucked up. Can you describe red to someone who’s never seen red? Do you just sound like a fucking lunatic?
Maybe it’s because I write, or because I try to compose music, so maybe it resonates with me differently. Maybe it’s because I understand how hard it is to be just barely competent, so maybe brilliance floors me that much more. Maybe it’s because I want to be there, and I live every day with the knowledge that I will not, that I’m not good enough, that I’ve had to choose a different path in life to save myself from that eventual disappointment. Maybe it’s because I’m realistic.
In science and math, there are generally discrete answers. Something is right or it is wrong. You follow the formula, you test the hypothesis, and then you analyze the results. Music isn’t like that. No matter what anyone tries to say, there isn’t a formula. There is math in music, it’s true, but the math doesn’t explain everything. I hesitate to use this word, because it starts sounding a little supernatural, but there’s something almost spiritual about music. There is almost a soul to it. The words rhyme, the structure repeats, and it’s still somehow more than just the AABA of it all.
This is all starting to sound nuts, even to me, so I’m gonna wrap up here.