When I was young I liked Steps and the Spice Girls and probably some other crap which it appears my brain in sheilding me from acknowledging. Thanks brain.
When I was a little less young I liked better music. I liked bands from the 90s that were getting long in the tooth but that I had been too young to like when they first emerged. I always felt annoyed that all the bands I liked had already happened and they were someone else's, not my own.
When I was slightly older than that I liked contemporary bands. I went to the gigs, got chased out of the gigs, and I encased myself in these bands because I had to cling to something and the rest of my sociable life was a void. I could have been that person if I'd wanted to but even then I realised there was nothing there for me so I didn't make it stick. I kept my earphones in to block out the irritations.
When I was in that middling age I also did the sterotypical raid of the parents cds and then I discovered all the music that had passed by long before I was even considered.
When I was that age I fell in love with music and I fell in love with bands, certain special bands, and I stayed in the honeymoon period for a long time.
The first band that initiated this free fall was Manic Street Preachers. I don't know if it was the story behind it or the cult following but I immersed myself in a world where there was no sense of popularity and in the real world I made the gap between myself and my contemporaries a chasm. Everyone I knew became like myths, phantoms of real people, and all the people I couldn't fully know became more real than I'd ever imagined. I felt like I was understood, I was accepted and I could fit without neglecting myself. This was something I could never have done in the oppressive, moulding social structure of high school. So I created two worlds. In one world I was a little known, little cared of girl whose peers either never noticed her or purposley ignored her. In the other world I was a girl as part of a story with a plot and a trajectory and a great sound track. This lasted for years and is always carried.
From Despair to Where - Manic Street Preachers
From then on I would get up in the morning and put on something upbeat. I would ready myself for the day caring not for fashion and not for their Ben Sherman blue shirts or Jane Norman shoulder bags. I dressed like the boys I admired. I'd leave my room putting in my earphones with something more serious, more deadly. This would last to the bus stop and would be turned up on the bus as the morons bounced and chattered. I'd listen to music in as much of the day as I was allowed, on break, in class. I loved that Mrs Forrester and Mr Wilson let me escape for hours while working. On the bus home I again filled my ears with the other world and blocked out 'reality'. Once I got home I would put it on in my room again and I would fall asleep to it. 4pm-10pm the real world really didn't seem to exist.
Exit Music - Radiohead
I listened to Manic Street Preachers while writing, lying on my bed. I Listened to Fiery Furnaces while reading. I listened to the Mars Volta late in the evening in despair. It's a sweet thing, love. What's not so sweet is not getting it back, and of course I couldn't really.
Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt - Mars Volta
I didn't get it back from my other world in a full way and when I reverted to seeking it in the real world it was starkly transparent, egg-timed and once more not reciprocated. I ended the real world fling and stayed with old faithful. Then I met Stuart.
I Wanna Die - Adam Green
I suppose I fell out of love with music and the whole other world it opened gradually. It's like balancing clutch and accelerator in the car, it gradually faded and the necessity to keep up with it diminished. I realised that the other world was a defence and an escape. It was life support until things came sure and safe in the real world. It was a frank exhange. I fell out of love naturally.
Death on the Stairs - The Libertines
In the last few years I've been pining for it though, but the door to the other world seems hesitant and the world uninviting, harsh. I get in and find I'm in someone else's house, a niche I no longer fit. I still dip in but it's not the same. I still love music but I am no longer in love with it. I really just wanted to explain this. It feels like I've lost a bit of myself sometimes. Then I realise it's ok, I'll always have it, in some way or other.
Fall to Climb - R.E.M.
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