Music is My Drug

Music is My Drug

In a bout of restlessness, i found myself searching through some things. First, my box of books which contained a book of poetry that I've carried around since 8th grade (and on what I blame the coming little thought). The second thing was one of my 2 200 disc capacity CD cases. I came across a CD that I bought the year it came out and probably only listened to it for a month or two after I got it, and that was in 1996. I've been listening to music solely off of my computer or some listening device for so long that if it hadn't been for that strange urge to open my CD case, I wouldn't have even remembered owning it. It wasn't that is was a bad CD, it was just that time moves on and there are new songs that came along and new ways to listen to music but in the beginnings only so much room to hold it. So I picked and chose my favorites and others began to fade in memory. I decided to pull the CD out, listen to it again, and load it up onto my now larger external hard drive. And because I had already found one, I wanted to load up others, and so began my new "old music project." In the mean time, while I was embarking on this discovery of music that I bought and "had to have" however many years ago, my friend Voc was having her own encounter with her love of music. She tweeted a message conveying her own adventures in being a "music junkie" and after reading it and completely understanding her situation, considering I was elbow deep in my own music adventures, I decided to retweet her comment and this is all that followed.

Carron: RT @voc: There are necessities that I am needing to buy urgently, but I end up spending my money on music. #musicjunkie./ yeah... Ditto

Voc: zomg you retweet my tweet! ♥

Carron: It's because it's true of everyone who is like us... It's why I own a bunch of CDs from one-hit wonders that no one else knows but [I] still love. Why we love movies for their soundtracks. Why we can hear the song that's playing in a loud restaurant and no one else can. Why we always have a song in our heads or coming out of our mouths. We spend hours listening to music and finding new songs while cherishing old ones. We announce to the world when we find a new band who moves our hearts, souls, or even just our feet. We live, eat and breathe the melodies that others just hum. We need that piece of music that makes us remember that time when we were small, proud, happy, sad, discouraged, encouraged... We understand that those crafted notes are more than just notes but tones to resonate within and without. We are junkies... Music is our drug...

Voc: Well said dear, well said! :)

When I read her tweet, all the little things about my life that revolve around music just flowed to the forefront of my mind. First, I was, at that very moment loading CD's of those one hit wonders that I mentioned onto my external hard drive. Second, I'm always noticing the music that's playing wherever I am. In restaurants, stores, commercials; it doesn't matter, I hear it and I sing along. My sister marvels at this crazy little talent of mine (and sometimes she is annoyed by it too). Third, even as I write this, I find myself with a song playing in my mind as I try to form words for the "paper" (which isn't always very conducive to such ventures, but hey, what can I say, I have an inner soundtrack as oppose to an inner monologue). Fourth and finally, I'm actually attempting to gain a degree that focuses on trying to make more music in the world.

Flash forward a couple of weeks later, I open facebook up to see another friend quoting lyrics to "Tiny Dancer" and because she left it hanging and that should never happen with that song, I quoted the next line, and then another friend followed after with the line after that. Her "old" boss responded to us young ones with comments of us not being old enough to know the song. Which, as music junkies, we of course had to defend our love of Elton John. Each recalling times when music moved us. I enjoyed the kinship I felt with my fellow junkies as we talked about our drug and how we consumed it, be it concert, record, or CD. We took in the music and it became part of who we are and how we think and see things. We became altered by the experiences that music gave us and we wanted more.

So, here we are, music junkies. Consuming and being devoured by music like the drug that it is. Do we need an intervention? Sometimes I think we do, but really, I just don't want one. I love my drug.