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Nov. 9th, 2012 08:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sorcyressI need music, too.
My life --when I'm not acting big-D Depressed1, when I'm not terrifying myself with my lack of existence-- has a significant component of introspection to it. I mean, I've kept a livejournal for nine fucking years and I'm not famous. Writing about myself is one of the most central things I do. In just my last post, I discussed that one of the things I need to do to keep myself sane is write, and it's true.
But I need music too. Sanity, stability, the ways that I present whole: these things take more than just a keyoard or pen. I need to eat. I need to get not too little social interaction, and not too much. I need to spend time alone, doing nothing of import. I need sunshine, and warmth, and physical comfort.
And I need music. For more than half my life, until I was blessed with a computer of my own in 2003, I existed without music of my own. Oh, sometimes I could watch movies and rewind the songs again and again2, but that was dependent on access to the television, a limited and desirable good. But then I had Dmitri, and he lived inside my bedroom, and not too long after I learned that I could put music I had heard onto his hard drive and listen to it whenever I wanted.
I don't often try to categorize the pivotal moments of my emotional development, but that well ought to be on the list. Because it took very little time at all until I actually started using that music: to distract, to lift, to heal.
And I still don't think of myself as musical. I have no identity invested in the fact that I require the voices of a thousand others to settle the ones inside my own devilish head. And so periods go by -a week, two, three- where I don't listen at all. They're always horrible. More so because it can take so long to figure out what is wrong at all. And even when I do...it's somedays so hard to fix.
I don't want to overwhelm my roommates3 with my music (especially not at the volumes I require --remember I live much of my life with an intensity overwhelming), so I do not play it aloud. Nor do I want to shut myself off socially, so I do not play it in headphones. And so long goes by where I do not play music at all.
This post is a reminder to stop that. In recent days I have been with friends who leave their music on in the background, something to lean against as they perform their days. I want that to be my home. Because I need music.
And maybe writing that down will help remind me.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: I'm not, to the best of my knowledge, Depressed. I exhibit symptoms sometimes, but as far as I can tell, they're well within the bounds of neurotypical mood swings.
2: Labyrinth and Cats were probably the two most common offenders. To this day, I can sing every word of Dance Magic Dance *and* do all the voices.
3: I mean, I do play it sometimes when I'm on my computer in the living room, or when I'm trying to cook. My roommates are totally fine with that. But sometimes, I justwantneed to play the same song fifty times in a row at 11 and I am not so uncouth as to think that would not bother others.
My life --when I'm not acting big-D Depressed1, when I'm not terrifying myself with my lack of existence-- has a significant component of introspection to it. I mean, I've kept a livejournal for nine fucking years and I'm not famous. Writing about myself is one of the most central things I do. In just my last post, I discussed that one of the things I need to do to keep myself sane is write, and it's true.
But I need music too. Sanity, stability, the ways that I present whole: these things take more than just a keyoard or pen. I need to eat. I need to get not too little social interaction, and not too much. I need to spend time alone, doing nothing of import. I need sunshine, and warmth, and physical comfort.
And I need music. For more than half my life, until I was blessed with a computer of my own in 2003, I existed without music of my own. Oh, sometimes I could watch movies and rewind the songs again and again2, but that was dependent on access to the television, a limited and desirable good. But then I had Dmitri, and he lived inside my bedroom, and not too long after I learned that I could put music I had heard onto his hard drive and listen to it whenever I wanted.
I don't often try to categorize the pivotal moments of my emotional development, but that well ought to be on the list. Because it took very little time at all until I actually started using that music: to distract, to lift, to heal.
And I still don't think of myself as musical. I have no identity invested in the fact that I require the voices of a thousand others to settle the ones inside my own devilish head. And so periods go by -a week, two, three- where I don't listen at all. They're always horrible. More so because it can take so long to figure out what is wrong at all. And even when I do...it's somedays so hard to fix.
I don't want to overwhelm my roommates3 with my music (especially not at the volumes I require --remember I live much of my life with an intensity overwhelming), so I do not play it aloud. Nor do I want to shut myself off socially, so I do not play it in headphones. And so long goes by where I do not play music at all.
This post is a reminder to stop that. In recent days I have been with friends who leave their music on in the background, something to lean against as they perform their days. I want that to be my home. Because I need music.
And maybe writing that down will help remind me.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: I'm not, to the best of my knowledge, Depressed. I exhibit symptoms sometimes, but as far as I can tell, they're well within the bounds of neurotypical mood swings.
2: Labyrinth and Cats were probably the two most common offenders. To this day, I can sing every word of Dance Magic Dance *and* do all the voices.
3: I mean, I do play it sometimes when I'm on my computer in the living room, or when I'm trying to cook. My roommates are totally fine with that. But sometimes, I just
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music on its way!
on 2012-11-10 03:39 am (UTC)Holy digital divide, batman.
I went from records to tapes, tapes to CDs, a short stint with minidiscs, on to MP3, and have kept everything digital since then. A good chunk of my music is MP3s of records, old mix tapes made by friends, or Doctor Demento taped directly off the radio. In one extreme case, I have an album of commodore 64 music recorded on a cassette player parked in front of the computer speaker while my friend Jason played the game, since there was no way to get the song by itself.
MP3s made everything better, and I waited for the day I could get all my music on a single device. It's now backed up to an external drive, 2 laptops, a desktop, my iPad, and an odd MP3 player I can't remember the name of. Music is _always_ within reach...oh, and my phone since I got a large enough memory card for it.
You never know when you're going to need the original Iron Chef theme to get through the day.
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on 2012-11-10 04:28 am (UTC)3-4 days seems to be my limit, where lack of music starts crystallizing some part of my psyche and making my good moods more fragile, my bad moods more enduring.
(Though there seem to be exceptions. I rarely get to listen to music at cons, but am fine. Probably getting something else fulfilling the same brain-need?)
Back in my day, they din't even have computers to play music on ;D
on 2012-11-10 03:16 pm (UTC)My next access to music was my dinky GE Clock Radio that lived by my bed from which I made my very first mix tapes by recording songs from WQDR who would frequently play entire albums after midnight. And then I'd play those tapes over and over again on my portable tape recorder using up so many sets of D batteries that I am still working off the envirnomental kharma from it ;D
Eventually I got a real stereo and so on until the present day where, I too, rarely listen to music in the house for many of the same reasons you cite. I cleverly got past that issue of "man, I really need to have more music in my life" by getting (many since they kept being stolen :/) various digital players for the car and we almost always listen to that when driving about. It's how I turned my two youngers onto all my favorite music, muahahaha & all that.
This novelette's point, I guess, is to say there are always ways to get music into your life, even if you have to get creative about it!
Also that I totally approve of the notion that More Music == YES GOOD. ^_^
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on 2012-11-10 02:54 am (UTC)My music lifts me up and takes me places, and there are times when I need it loud. For most of those times, I need my earbuds.
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on 2012-11-10 01:05 pm (UTC)Also, I totally get this. Music has serious power. Back when I thought I could un-depress myself by making and following rules, one of the rules I made was "I must sing at least one song every day". I still actually try to keep to this one, having tossed most of the others by the wayside.
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on 2012-11-12 01:27 am (UTC)Warning: Related links are also awesome.
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on 2012-11-12 01:29 am (UTC)no subject
on 2012-11-12 04:16 pm (UTC)<3, your sister.