Music-One of my life's great passions
Music-One of my life's greatest trials

Music has been one of my passions as far back as I can remember.  Several of my earliest memories involve music. One of those memories is being held by my beautiful mother on the inside of her robe on a night I was cold and scared.  I remember feeling safe and loved as she sang to me "Addy boy I love you so, your happy smiling face, it's such a joy to look at, it makes home a lovely place."  Another early early memory I have is Dad playing the piano in the front room when he came home from work. My brothers and older sister would run round and round in circles while he played  "The 12th Street Rag" till we'd fall over laughing having the time of our lives.  I honestly think one of the main reasons those memories stuck is because they were associated with music.  Music has a powerful, lasting effect on the brain when it comes to memories, as I've come to experience first hand.

Music has been my choice of entertainment for quite a while.  I'd much rather listen to music than watch TV any day of the week.  The range of music I like is about as broad as it can get.  I suppose I love music for the same reasons most people love their music.  One particular reason being- we connect with it.  We can relate to songs/lyrics/music in ways that we otherwise would have an impossible time expressing on our own. Have you ever come across a song that depicts exactly how you "feel" at a particular point in you life?  I have.  Many many times.  Often times for the good but, if I'm being honest, more often for the bad.  I came to a point in my own life where I felt like I had to admit to myself that music has a much greater impact on me than I heretofore had been willing to recognize.

Prior to this blog, I haven't shared very much with very many people about the details of my of life.  As I've mentions before in earlier posts, the reason being is I haven't wanted to be a rain cloud in anyone else's life.  I've been trying to work things out and improve things in my life lately.  But, I still have felt pretty battered and bean for a while now. And one of the major truths that I've had to own up to is that music must contribute to the perpetuation of those feelings.  I realized that the vast majority of what I have gravitated towards (even though my love for music spans all genres, except Mariachi bands) tends to be angry.  It's loud.  It's hopeless.  It numbs me.  The lyrics often times are pain-filled, dripping with regret..tormented. When it wasn't angry and tormented, my music was often flippant and defiant, even vulgar.  I feel like the music itself conveys the inner battle that seems to be constantly raging inside of me in a way that words alone otherwise couldn't adequately portray.

As I look back on my life, as of late, the only way I'd been able to describe it is it's adequately resembled a train wreck.  Broken marriage.  Broken business endeavors.  Broken promises.  Broken hearts.  At least in my heart and mind, I have felt like someone who has been ran over by a train that's laying in an intensive care unit fighting for their life.  I have noticed that music can calm, soothe and even help heal a troubled heart.  Or it can be exactly like formaldehyde preserving a dead body.  It has the capability to preserve all the hurt and pain that the lyrics and rhythms relate to in the very first place.  I would be willing to bet my life that music truly does have the power to "preserve our minds".  Whether that be for better or worse.  I guess the bottom line is, I have been doing everything I can to clean up my "train wreck".  I've got so much that I'm working to correct in my life. And the truth is, I haven't been able to do it with a steady stream of formaldehyde to my brain. 

"Daddy, I'm scared"

Growing up I really didn't have a problem with music.  For the most part it back then, my music consumption was fairly tame.  It was more after my mission that my preferences started to sway.  The first time I really realized that music can be a dangerous tool of the adversary was when I went on a road trip to Indiana with some friends.  I had fallen asleep in the car (something I rarely do).  I remember being out cold and all of the sudden the song "Last Resort" from Papa Roach came on.  It was like someone jammed a syringe full of nor-epinephrine straight into my heart.  I woke up instantly feeling completely jacked.  The adrenaline rush was crazy and the instant rage I felt made no sense, and the scary part was, it felt good.  I remember having a distinct impression all those years ago that the chord pattern used in that song (it's also used in Greenday's "Brain Stew") and the lyrics written had the potential to destroy me.  What is so sad is that even after having that impression, the decisions I've made over the years have put me in a position where that song has almost become the anthem of my life.

I've gone back and forth on whether to post a couple of songs that I've related to for so long or not.  I don't want to perpetuate the distribution of destructive media.  Nor do I want to introduce poison to others.  But, I've decided to post a couple for the purpose of giving a glimpse of what it's felt like on the inside of my mind and by so doing, give a very stark warning that listening to music like these examples only numbs the heart and blinds the mind.  I say in advance that they are offensive.

Here's the one I woke up to on my road trip and had subsequently been a mainstay in what could describe how I've felt inside.  I'll say it again.  It is loud and offensive.

Here's one that a person looking at me on the street or even people who know me really well would be blown away to know that I've ever even heard this song let alone know every single word by heart and have related to it for years and years.





Being able to relate to these songs and a 1000 others just like them for so long, is it any wonder I know what it feels like to sit in a parked car at night with a loaded .45 in my hand trying to decided if I should do the world a favor by pulling the trigger?

A couple of years ago Collin and Eden were at my place.  We always listen to music together.  Of course I never play angry/tormented stuff like this around them. Instead it's fun, beautiful, uplifting songs.  But, one day this next song came on because we were listening to a "recently played" play list.  "Erase My Scars" happened to be one of my "fight" songs.  I related so deeply to this one because it purveys the feelings I felt inside as I've wanted so bad to change once and for all but, couldn't seem to because I was so broken inside.  The lyrics were so similar to the many conversations I'd have back and forth with myself in my head.





When this song began, Eden's response hit me between my eye's and seared into my heart forever.  I was standing a couple feet away and she look at me as her big beautiful eyes became huge, riddled with a terrified look.  She took a couple of steps toward me and put her arms around my leg, looked up at me and in the saddest tone said "Daddy, I'm scared."  She was terrified.  I could feel her little heart pounding on my leg.  The happy, joyful atmosphere we had was instantly replaced with darkness merely by the intro to that song.  Music (one of the biggest parts of my life), listened to by her daddy when he's all by himself and it absolutely terrified her.  It was then that I recognized on a very personal level that yes indeed, the effects of music  are far reaching and run deep.

The crazy thing is those 3 songs were on the exact same playlist as the last two I'm going to put up. "Erase My Scars" came on right after this song that we were previously listening to by Celtic Women called "Over The Rainbow."





I can relate to beautiful music too.  Even in my darkest moments, there have always been beautiful things in my life. As it so happens, even including the hardest period of my life, the all-time most listened to song in my iTunes library is the song "Come Thou Fount" performed by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.  There is no song written on earth I can relate to more than this one.  Sadly, "Last Resort" by Papa Roach is a close close second.  I'm going to add the lyrics below the video because they are so powerful.  Read along as the song plays.  You'll see what I mean.

                                        Come, thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy grace.

                                        Streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise.

                                        Teach me some melodious sonnet sung by flaming tongues above;

                                        Praise the mount, I'm fixed upon it, mount of thy redeeming love.

                                        Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by thy help I come,

                                        And I hope by thy good pleasure safely to arrive at home.

                                        Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.

                                        Here's my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.

                                        Jesus sought me when a stranger wandering from the fold of God.

                                        He, to rescue me from danger, interposed His precious blood.

                                        Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.

                                        Here's my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.

                                        O to grace, how great a debtor, daily I'm constrained to be!

                                        Let thy goodness like a fetter bind my wandering heart to thee.

                                        Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.

                                        Here's my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.

                                        Seal it for thy courts above.

Like I mentioned earlier, the ironic thing is everyone of these songs were on the exact same play list.  Anybody else see a massive contradiction there?  Welcome to my world of inner conflict.  I'd listen to this playlist throughout any given day and it didn't matter if I was at work, at the gym or before I went to bed at night.  I'd find myself with teeth clinched, eyes closed tight, tears streaming down my cheeks because I hated knowing I could relate to so much that was so hopeless.  Then songs like "Over the Rainbow" would come on and the tears would continue to flow because the beauty exuded by that song conveys the beauty to me of the love I feel for my kids.  Then "Come Thou Fount" would come on and I'd curl up in a ball because I am so "prone to wander" but, I don't want to be.  I want to be better.

Music is like so many of the adversary's other tools.  He hijacks that which is inherently good and mutates it into a virus that destroys as it spreads.  Music can lure us into a cyclical pattern that feeds off itself and progressively leads us into a mist of darkness.  The more you relate, the more you listen.  The more you listen, the more you relate. And so it goes.  A little boy listening to his beautiful mother in adoration as she sings to him to soothe his fears, over time eventually evolves into a grown, broken man who's contemplating "cut(ting) my life into pieces" as he sit's with a loaded .45 in his hand- "That' right trigger in between my eyes".  No.  I do not believe it is mere coincidence.  I do not believe there's no correlation between where I've been and the music I've let enter my brain.  Music in not just "entertainment". There's no good excuse to listen to poison.  I don't care if it is a good "lifting song" as I told myself so many times.  Fact is, a song through your ears can have as damaging effects on a person's well being as an image through your eyes, a sensation through your skin or a substance injected/snorted/inhaled/swallowed.

And that brings me to the whole purpose of this post in the first place.  With Eden's terrified look when that song came on, I recognized the need to extricate the IVs that have been pumping my soul full of formaldehyde for way too long.  I just hadn't had the courage to let go of my death grip.  Because, after all, in my loneliness over the years, most of the time, my music had been the only thing to keep me company.  Letting go of the music felt like letting go of lifelong friends who been through what I'd been through.  Faulty thinking, I know.  A thought process I'm trying to rectify.  Over the last couple of months I finally made the decision remove it from my life.  I believe as I remove one of the major sources of conflict for me in music, how can't that help me heal?  How can't I not finally move forward if I let go of the very chains that tie me to hurtful and destructive feeling of the past?  How can that not help me to have the added strength to let go of other life sucking influences in my life?

In other words, I need a new soundtrack to my life.  One with a consistently positive message.  I need to trade the lyrics of my past life in once and for all.  I'd like to ask anyone who might read this to comment or private message me any and all recommendations of good wholesome music that you'd care to share with me.  As I've emptied and deleted destructive songs from my iTunes, Pandora, Grooveshark, Spotify, Slacker Radio accounts, I'm left with a pretty big void since music is such a large part of my life and so much of it gravitated toward the angry.  I have a lot of good music but, I want to continue to fill that void that's been left by removing all the bad stuff with more great music. Your input would be most welcome and I thank any in advance who want to send recommendations my way.  I'm done with formaldehyde.  I'm done.  And I'm hopeful that any of my friends or family or anyone else who read this might take an inventory of the music you listen to and have an honest conversation with yourself on what type of influence your music brings into your life and home.  Presumably small things can have such unpresumably large consequences.


*And for the record, because I don't want to worry anybody- The sitting-in-the-car-contemplating-having-a-bullet-for-dinner incident was over 5 years ago.  I came to the conclusion that following through with something like that, my problems would be immediately waiting for me on the other side.  I would've just exponentially compounded my problems and dramatically reduced my ability to solve any of them and hurt a lot of people in the process.  So no need to worry.  I'm never going back to that place again.  I'm here to fight another day and as far as I'm concerned, will be for a long long time.  I'm going to go out of this life just how I came in-kicking and screaming.  Hopefully, with your help, there'll be an epic soundtrack in the background.