Friday, May 1, 2015

Wanderlust and Music Therapy

“I hand myself over to the music,” he wrote. 

You might use this trick often, if you were born with a hairtrigger scale. Music - like any art - can be as superficial or deep as you make it. I make it medicine. It’s the drug that helps turn spine to steel when dealing with life’s heaviness. Useful alchemy when all your fine-tuning efforts don’t seem effective enough alone. 

Maybe this emotional thing is a defect. Maybe it’s a blessing. Like most things, it depends on what you make it.

“I hand myself over to the music.”

The words cut a string invisible to the naked eye. There was a little shock, I shuddered, and a piece of self awareness broke the surface. I hung it out to dry in the sunlight and chewed the side of my thumb cuticle like my brain chews thoughts.

I run far more from the heavy than I’d care to admit.

I drive long distances to nowhere in particular. I grab a random to-do from mid-air and throw some clothes on, hurry out the door.

All for the unconscious therapy teasing me in the form of my car’s speakers blasting what I need into my ears - be it razors, ocean, bullets, ice, silk, canyons, sticks to break bones and remend in a fiery resurrection of some kind. Meanwhile, I get the Windex I think I need or browse the bookstore to thrust myself into a crowd of others looking to lose themselves in other people’s words.

Now that I’m a bit more aware of my behavior, the medicine seems to work better. I feel closer to whole, closer to solid and not quite so mercurial. There is nothing right or wrong, better or worse with your head in the clouds but a lifeline to the ground seems a healthy option for me.

It IS about control. Life seems unwieldy but if you’ve got some of your shit together, then you’ve got what you need to navigate with some dexterity. Sometimes the music helps carry the weight so that I can devote myself far more to living and less about worry, shame, fear, self-destruction.

Not the perfect solution but sure a lot closer to functionality than without.

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