(music) falling in love again....

it all started a few months ago. i was at a poetry slam and a local jersey city poet/performance artist by the name of mad max recited a piece about music. it was mostly about how music on the radio nowadays sucks and how that inspires him to listen to the music he likes to listen to on his ipod and how that keeps him going.

that isn't to say i didn't like music before i heard this poem... i've always had a love for music... but maybe my love for it had dulled a little bit. whatever the case may be, this poem that i heard that night planted a seed that turned into something new and awesome instantly the next day. all of the sudden i couldn't keep the ear buds of my ipod out of my ears. i had hopelessly fallen in love, head way over heels, with music all over again.

it was around this time that i, for some reason or another, started listening to a shitload of 'against me!' i got all their studio albums and listened to them nonstop. i had known of and enjoyed 'against me!' before this, even seen them live. but i couldn't call myself a devout member of their fan club... before this phase i had just kinda dug their music from afar.

but now i found myself suddenly lost in a sea of 'against me!' i couldn't swim out of it and i didn't want to. if i drowned in their music before the batteries ever died on my ipod, i'd be fine with that outcome.

while i was consumed by their music, heavy shit was going on in my life. the music of 'against me!' was there during some pretty tough times. and like a good friend who has your back when you need it the most, you don't forget shit like that. i think that made the connection even deeper.

but eventually i can only take so much of one band's music. it's nothing personal against the band. no music fan should ever settle on listening to only one band all the time. you have to hear and appreciate different sounds. 'against me!' would remain the most heavily played music in my selection, but eventually the frequency would dwindle down a bit.

that was until recently.....

the pair of headphones i had were dying on me. they had been dying on me for sometime actually. the right ear bud played music at a way lower volume. i put up with it for a few weeks though. i probably shouldn't have.... i should've replaced them the moment i felt like i was compromising the experience that is listening to music... but i didn't. i dealt with the aging headphones until i lost all sound completely in the right end. it was at this point that i went out and bought a new pair of ear buds.

and that's when things got awesome again. i had gotten so used to a compromised music listening experience, that when i put both buds in my ears and put it on full blast, it was like i couldn't believe what i was hearing. i felt totally captivated by the sound. i had suddenly breathed new life into music. it was loud! it was full! and it was fucking awesome!

with music on full blast, i had no choice.... not even a full thought process... i instinctively went to the 'a's' in my music library and put on 'against me!' and boom, there they were again. their music was back in all it's full glory.

in a matter of a few months i had fallen in love again.... head over heels... i fucking love music.