It was August 2003.  I had just taken the bar exam, and was preparing for my new full time job.  Two months earlier I had quit my band, on the basis that I needed to focus on studying and my career.  That month the New Amsterdams released their third album and I was oblivious.  That was the month that I died a little on the inside.

The most important thing in my life, for as long as I can remember, has been music.  My life revolved around it.  As a child I spent hours upon hours playing guitar in my room.  In high school I had a band that could do Allman Brothers covers and easily transition into Primus.   I went to UVa thinking that I could be in next reincarnation of the Dave Matthews Band.  I went to frat parties to see Slackjaw.  I went to Trax to see String Cheese Incident.  I spent summers following the Allmans on tour. 

When I came up to DC for law school, I answered an ad in the city paper.  I joined a fledgling indie band, playing shitty clubs in Baltimore and the Velvet Lounge.  Driven by the success of Built to Spill, we strove for some kind of popular recognition that never happened.  By the end of law school, the most prudent move seemed to be... you know, a real career.  

My subscription to CMJ lapsed.  I stopped listening to new music.  I stopped listening to new bands.  I stopped trying to find new music to like.  I stopped playing and writing.  I reverted to my music collection, obsessing on Brighten the Corners like it had just been released.  I became a musical conservative.  When I heard Death Cab referenced in the main stream, I was like "you mean the band that used to play with Caustic Resin and Pedro the Lion?"  No, I was out of the loop.

Fastforward to 2006, RCR stands in Melody Music and finds the album the New Amsterdams released more than 3 years earlier.  "Worse For The Wear."  Yes, he certainly is.  Within three songs I stopped the album, dusted off my keyboard, restrung my guitar, and finished the song I had been trying to write for a year.  Because I found again what was most important.  Sure, I knew it all along, but sometimes you need the truth to punch you in the face.  With brass knuckles.

So for the last few weeks I've been swimming in music, new and old.  Finding people who know how to express the things that I feel far better than I.  Because music can convey your emotions far better than your words ever could.  Just think, how many relationships begin with the mix tape (tape, archaic, I know).   It's because music can convey not only how you feel, but who you are.  It's so fundamental.  If you can connect on a musical level, you're golden.  How much more ecstatic have you been than when you're at a show and you look over at the person you're with, and you realize you're both equally moved.

That's my greatest problem with pop music: that music is the best format to convey complex emotion, but pop music doesn't do that.  Pop music can be broken down into simple categories:  songs about love, songs about anger, songs about wealth, songs about loss.  But it's never that simple.  That's not a real emotion.  Good music will capture the complexities of the human experience.  To be sad, rejoiceful, remorseful, and hopeful at the same time.   Or to take the most miserable, hopeless sadness, and express it in a way that it's beauty surpasses the negativity.   On a personal level, I find the most beauty in songs of sadness and despair.  Because that's real.  That's human.  That's life.

So if this post has a point, it's to keep music in your life.  Music can be your uplifter, support, your therapist, your mirror, yourself trying to get out.   I think that it may be the most important thing to yourself.