Turning the music up and the world down

Music has always been a big big part of my life. I can remember listening to eight tracks in our red car when I was little, and in the stereo that my dad finally sold a few years back at a garage sale...to my grandma who now has it in her basement. I missed the record generation but I had my share of cassette tapes. I still remember the first tape I bought on my own - Whitney Houston's Whitney. I loved that album. I now own it on CD.

There was Madonna and Bon Jovi and Tiffany and New Kids on the Block and all those really great, horrible late 80s early 90s groups like Color Me Badd and Kris Kross (Gonna Make You Jump, Jump!). I remember passing around the lyrics to Papa Don't Preach in a portable at Northwest Elementary School like it was the biggest contraband around.

And then of course, there was Michael Jackson. I remember hearing Beat It for one of the first times in my friend Sandy's room. She was older than me, our families' were friends and she was cool. Michael Jackson was cool. And I was reminded of that this weekend when Angela and I went to see This is It! - the concert documentary. I was immediately transported back to my childhood and just hearing those first few chords made my feet tap and my shoulders start to move. That music is a part of me. I came home and bought twelve Michael Jackson songs on iTunes Saturday night and have listened to them over and over all day.

And yet I go through stages with music. For the last year or so it hasn't been a large part of my life. In high school I was in choir and there was music everywhere. For a time in college, when I lived in a room with two other girls and barely had a mattress to call my own I played music all day at work, pounding the songs into my being. Jennifer Knapp's Kansas will forever be a part of my soul. Right now, it's silent in my room and yet I can hear the first song as clear as if the stereo were on.

I love country music, pop music, rock music, showtunes, even rap. I know the words to Kanye West and Eminem songs. I know every verse to more hymns than I can count. I love Billy Joel and Barenaked Ladies and obsure songs I get for free off the Internet. I listen to songs over and over again until I know all the words. And this summer that happened again. It started with a song from the Fox TV show Glee. And then another song and another and before I knew it I was listening to music again, all the time. Loudly, iPod plugged into the speakers, blaring through the house. I hope my neighbors loved it.

And then something else happened. I discovered this little known singer songwriter who I had been all but oblivious to until this spring: John Mayer. Yeah, I know, where I have been for the last ten years or so. Apparently not listening to John Mayer records. But suddenly I couldn't stop listening to his first studio release. I played it every day on my commute to my internship. I played it as I ate lunch in my car and then drove around the block and back in the parking garage. I listened to it until I knew the words and the chords and the stories. And then I bought two more of his CDs. And I've listened to them for a few weeks straight now.

It occurred to me, the other day, as I sat in Starbucks, trying to write, loud music blaring, that music helps me. I knew this a while ago, I don't know how I'd forgotten it but I had. While writing most of my novel I listened to the Garden State soundtrack (I adore soundtracks, and I buy them, all kinds of them!). It's the most played CD on my iTunes account, by far. Those songs have become white noise to me. I know them so well that I can use them to block out the world and focus on the project at hand. I'm now doing that with John Mayer's work. Or, while I'm writing my Bones spec, the Bones soundtrack.

I remember once, asking a new acquaintance what type of music he liked and he said he didn't really like music and I thought that was so strange. There had to be something. Yo-Yo Ma, the Beatles, Johnny Cash (just some of my faves), somebody, anybody. But no, he wasn't a fan of music in general. And I remember thinking how sad. Without music I think life gets too loud.