What came first? The Music or the Misery?

Our lives are movies - each individual day just ends up being our own, mostly terrible, collection of snippets that make up the bigger film that ends up being our life. Some people live Oscar winning lives, deserving of campaign trails and press junkets - the kind you want to watch again and again....and others, well they lead a straight to DVD existence, baby.

So if the cumulation of our time on earth is a movie of sorts, then its imperative to have a good soundtrack to accompany it. Each act of your life needs a song - something to inform the viewer as to the overall mood. It can be loving, or foreboding, or euphoric. Think of John Cusak with the boom-box blasting "In Your Eyes". Think of the "Jaws" theme. Think a coked out dude in a robe while "Sister Christian" blasts. . Our life's soundtrack has all the hits - the songs that remind you of "the biggies" - the ones that remind you of your first kiss, first heart-break, getting the dream-job, wanting to murder/suicide everyone at said dream job, etc., etc., etc. Those are the power-ballads. The "My Heart Will Go Ons", if you will. However, there are other, smaller, songs that make up your daily mood - maybe they won't make the CD - but folks would be stupid to ignore them. These are the songs that are the canary in the proverbial coal mine. You can tell a lot about friends/co-workers/lovers by what music they're listening to at any given point.

For me, I have what many would call an eclectic musical palate. I listen to it all, loudly and on repeat. I'm either very passionate or have an obsessive compulsive disorder. Regardless, I almost lost a friend over the fact I wouldn't stop listening to Billy Joel's "Matter of Trust". It's just so fucking good. So, when I find myself getting a crush on someone, coming up against a deadline, deciding to move - there's always a song that accompanies those feelings and decisions. When it comes to the last few years, due to the fact I had no life outside of work, my musical taste took a decidedly darker and more angry turn. I used to be able to turn on Steve Winwood's "Finer Things" and it would ground me. It was my own, very smooth, version of meditation. I could listen to the words "while there is time, lets go out and feel everything" and it brought a calmness over me. I'm not even exaggerating. That song was my own personal Xanax. But, as things became more and more stressful, Steve just couldn't cut it anymore. He couldn't bring me down from the constant anxiety and rage that I felt at all times. So I changed to a new drug - instead of Xanax, I wanted something that validated my hate and anger. I wanted meth. I wanted bath salts. I wanted to really own the anger I was feeling. And that kids, is how I ended up listening to Rob Zombie's DRAGULA on repeat for two weeks. And I didn't stop with that - I listened to Ozzy, Nine Inch Nails, Metallica, the works. I developed the same musical taste as the dude who runs the Gravitron at the busted carnival two towns over.

But it helped. Truly. It was like boxing. The music absolutely beat shit out me and I loved it. My coworkers could tell how the day would go depending on how early I put on Rage Against The Machine. If it was 8am or earlier, it was necessary to clear a wide berth when encountering me. And I fed off that music and anger for YEARS. And then I quit. I quit work. I quit life as I knew it. And when I quit, I was fucking A D R I F T. The only songs that felt like they resonated with me are what I call "Divorce Rock". Songs written by people of a certain age dealing with some SHIT. Do you know what its like to find yourself convulsing in sobs because Bonnie Raitt's "Nick of Time" hit you where you lived? When you listen to John Mellencamp's "Check It Out" and just fucking GET IT? Don't get me started on Paul Simon's "Graceland". I could write a dissertation on "I know what I know". But I was divorcing my former life. Divorcing myself from reality. And those middle-aged crooners spoke to my soul. And when I drove to Vermont to go house-hunting, I put on Willie Nelson's version of "Moonlight In Vermont" and everything felt right. I challenge anyone not to move to Vermont if you listen to that while driving past quaint New England churches and apple orchards.

And then I relocated to small town Vermont. And things were great at first - riding the high of the move and the changes I had been brave enough to make - I was really living LIFE. My soundtrack was great. It was upbeat. It was fun. It was the soundtrack of woman who was a sister doing it for herself.

And then this week happened.

I had two of my very best friends visiting. Friends who have known me for almost 20 years. Who know where all the bodies are buried. Friends whom I love dearly and never get to see and who traveled across the country to be with me in this new venture. And it was lovely and bittersweet and much needed. And then they left. And I was hit with a feeling of loneliness and isolation that I could feel in my bones. Every single fiber of my being was asking me, "Why are you doing this. The foliage won't keep you warm at night. The maple syrup can't make you feel complete". And for the first time in a long while, I felt true anxiety. The kind that stops you in your tracks. And it was at that moment my soundtrack shifted. I needed freak-out tunes and I needed them NOW.

This was inevitable. At some point, I was going to have to come down from the high and face reality. So now this act in my movie is the one where the girl who is trying to figure it all out feels like she took about twenty steps backwards. This is the part where she has to come to terms with what happens when you implode your life. Eventually it will be a new act, but for right now, melancholy in bones is the song I'm listening to on repeat.