When the music goes, I like to follow it where it leads me
I have always found solace in the printed word. When I needed to escape from things going on around me, books were the cheapest and most readily available resource. They just weren't the only one.
I spent a good amount of my life with music in it. I play two instruments and want to learn more. I sing with the radio and with my family. My music collection, with the advent of easily storable MP3s has become even more eclectic than it used to be and I was getting told that my music tastes were "weird" at best and "schizophrenic" at worst before I had even graduated high school. It made no difference to me. I liked the music that I liked.
I asked my boss if I could wear my headphones while I was doing data entry in another area of the department. He gave me the okay and I'm so glad that he did. It's easy to forget, sometimes, what music does for me. It's even easier for me to lose sight of what it does to me.
This morning, I put the headphones on and turned it to a playlist I'd built a couple of months ago. I don't even remember for sure why I had. It opened with "Ain't No Rest for the Wicked" by Cage the Elephant. As soon as the opening riff started, it felt like my brain slid into fifth gear and settled into the train of thought I needed to focus on my work and get things done.
Stress has been mounting at work. The last couple of days, I've had my butt chewed out at least five times for something that I didn't actually do. However, the butt that really needs chewing for it is a High Muckity Muck type-butt and therefore is iron-clad and not capable of getting chewed. So, I've born the wrath of several people. It makes me want to stand up on my desk, Chucks planted firmly in the sea of paperwork that I don't have time to complete because of this newfound dedication to making my ass sore, and shout "I have EIGHT bosses, Bob! Eight! Do you know what that means? When something goes wrong, I have to hear about it EIGHT times!" (It's paraphrased, of course, but you get the reference, I'm sure).
One of those co-workers thought that she'd get to take her frustrations out on me at lunch. She discovered, quickly enough, that she did not want to start that game with me. For starters, in a battle of wits, she's not quite well-equipped enough to win. Secondly, she was in the wrong and she knew it and when she came at me for the second time that day, she screwed up majorly.
Now, I could have sat there, stewing about it and feeling angry and alienated and just let it go spiraling out of control right into resentful territory. Instead, I put on my headphones and got to work. I let the music wash over me and carry me away, to whatever memories and sensation it could elicit from me.
That playlist had Queen and Todd Snider, a dash of Led Zepplin, some Etta James, a little Belafonte, some Stones, a smidge of Cat Stevens, and even a touch of Faith No More. I let my toes tap while I worked, the only outward sign aside from my headphones that showed I was listening to anything.
The Todd Snider song I picked, "Easy Money" made me remember that things are not always what they seem. Yes, I work in an office. I am polite. I am quiet. They know me there as the odd girl who reads all the time and has a toy dinosaur, a Loki action figure, a blue pom-pom critter, and a Yosimite Sam mug as a pencil cup on my desk. They don't have any idea that I've got worlds inside my head. They know that I write, they've even seen me commit some of those worlds to paper. But they don't understand. I couldn't make them, even if I wanted them to.
"The Music Goes 'Round my Head" by The Saints brings me back to my sense of humor. It's a good philosophy of life song. I find perspective in that one quite a bit. Trivialities become more obvious to me as I zoom out into the grander, bigger picture and realize that if people want to be petty, then that's their issue. I have better things to do with my time.
Just to drive that point home, "One Last Drink" by Enter the Haggis is the next song on the list. I don't want to go out bitter and ticked at the world. There are so many things that I want to see and do and enjoy. I have stories to live and write. I'd rather go out on a life like the one in that song and be remembered that joyfully.
Ironically, when I discovered that a new piece of software didn't actually do what it was supposed to do and was apparently happily borking itself behind the scenes, I was listening to "Epic" by Faith No More. Let me tell you, when you're watching a very expensive new program unravel itself steadily because it's trying to do what it was supposed to be designed to, that is the perfect piece of music to accompany it. I should have been swearing up a storm and completely losing it over what was happening. I credit the music for keeping me calm. I just sat there with my eyebrows trying to crawl into my hairline and my mouth open, barely suppressing hysterical laughter as I realized that, no, that software wasn't doing a damn thing it was supposed to-it was just SAYING that it did and doing a miserable job of covering its lie.
Zepplin's "Black Dog" was the song that came on when it struck me. "This is not my problem. It was never my problem. All that I can do is work the best that I can and, when things like this happen, tell the people who need to know. I am not the programmer. There's no possible way I could have broken this. Rock on. Their issue now."
I hunkered down to finish up what I needed to do while Pinmonkey's "Barbed Wire and Roses" played. Oddly enough, the lyrics did fit my current work situation incredibly well. This is leaving scars. I have now discovered, first hand, in peculiarly brutal fashion, what self-sacrifice and doing what is best for my co-workers actually does. That will never happen again. I'm still bleeding out from this one. Painful lesson learned, internalized, and committed to memory. It will heal. I'm too strong to let it stay raw for much longer. I could let it make me afraid and angry. I won't. They just need to understand that I trusted them. I didn't know how misguided that trust was until it was violated. I know now. I learn from my mistakes. Thinking I wouldn't is their mistake.
Before my thoughts got too dark and started twisting in on themselves, I was rescued by "Earthman" by Poets and Pornstars. It's one of those songs-no, that's not right, it's THE song, that really makes me feel a transcendent sensation of being connected to the Universe. I can breathe to that song. I can let my heart soar and my mind drift to that song and not have to spend a second worrying about where they'll go. It's always to a good place. It's the song that I can listen to and just Let Things Go. I know that carrying that stress hurts me. It hurts my writing. It hurts every bit of art that I create. That's how I get it to stop. My characters are my babies. Letting someone else hurt them outside the realm of fiction is unthinkable. I listened to that song. Every time I hear it, I always really listen to it. It's not listening with my ears or my brain, it's deeper than that. I feel that song. It opens up my heart and comforts me to my soul.
Sometimes, I really need that.
I spent a good amount of my life with music in it. I play two instruments and want to learn more. I sing with the radio and with my family. My music collection, with the advent of easily storable MP3s has become even more eclectic than it used to be and I was getting told that my music tastes were "weird" at best and "schizophrenic" at worst before I had even graduated high school. It made no difference to me. I liked the music that I liked.
I asked my boss if I could wear my headphones while I was doing data entry in another area of the department. He gave me the okay and I'm so glad that he did. It's easy to forget, sometimes, what music does for me. It's even easier for me to lose sight of what it does to me.
This morning, I put the headphones on and turned it to a playlist I'd built a couple of months ago. I don't even remember for sure why I had. It opened with "Ain't No Rest for the Wicked" by Cage the Elephant. As soon as the opening riff started, it felt like my brain slid into fifth gear and settled into the train of thought I needed to focus on my work and get things done.
Stress has been mounting at work. The last couple of days, I've had my butt chewed out at least five times for something that I didn't actually do. However, the butt that really needs chewing for it is a High Muckity Muck type-butt and therefore is iron-clad and not capable of getting chewed. So, I've born the wrath of several people. It makes me want to stand up on my desk, Chucks planted firmly in the sea of paperwork that I don't have time to complete because of this newfound dedication to making my ass sore, and shout "I have EIGHT bosses, Bob! Eight! Do you know what that means? When something goes wrong, I have to hear about it EIGHT times!" (It's paraphrased, of course, but you get the reference, I'm sure).
One of those co-workers thought that she'd get to take her frustrations out on me at lunch. She discovered, quickly enough, that she did not want to start that game with me. For starters, in a battle of wits, she's not quite well-equipped enough to win. Secondly, she was in the wrong and she knew it and when she came at me for the second time that day, she screwed up majorly.
Now, I could have sat there, stewing about it and feeling angry and alienated and just let it go spiraling out of control right into resentful territory. Instead, I put on my headphones and got to work. I let the music wash over me and carry me away, to whatever memories and sensation it could elicit from me.
That playlist had Queen and Todd Snider, a dash of Led Zepplin, some Etta James, a little Belafonte, some Stones, a smidge of Cat Stevens, and even a touch of Faith No More. I let my toes tap while I worked, the only outward sign aside from my headphones that showed I was listening to anything.
The Todd Snider song I picked, "Easy Money" made me remember that things are not always what they seem. Yes, I work in an office. I am polite. I am quiet. They know me there as the odd girl who reads all the time and has a toy dinosaur, a Loki action figure, a blue pom-pom critter, and a Yosimite Sam mug as a pencil cup on my desk. They don't have any idea that I've got worlds inside my head. They know that I write, they've even seen me commit some of those worlds to paper. But they don't understand. I couldn't make them, even if I wanted them to.
"The Music Goes 'Round my Head" by The Saints brings me back to my sense of humor. It's a good philosophy of life song. I find perspective in that one quite a bit. Trivialities become more obvious to me as I zoom out into the grander, bigger picture and realize that if people want to be petty, then that's their issue. I have better things to do with my time.
Just to drive that point home, "One Last Drink" by Enter the Haggis is the next song on the list. I don't want to go out bitter and ticked at the world. There are so many things that I want to see and do and enjoy. I have stories to live and write. I'd rather go out on a life like the one in that song and be remembered that joyfully.
Ironically, when I discovered that a new piece of software didn't actually do what it was supposed to do and was apparently happily borking itself behind the scenes, I was listening to "Epic" by Faith No More. Let me tell you, when you're watching a very expensive new program unravel itself steadily because it's trying to do what it was supposed to be designed to, that is the perfect piece of music to accompany it. I should have been swearing up a storm and completely losing it over what was happening. I credit the music for keeping me calm. I just sat there with my eyebrows trying to crawl into my hairline and my mouth open, barely suppressing hysterical laughter as I realized that, no, that software wasn't doing a damn thing it was supposed to-it was just SAYING that it did and doing a miserable job of covering its lie.
Zepplin's "Black Dog" was the song that came on when it struck me. "This is not my problem. It was never my problem. All that I can do is work the best that I can and, when things like this happen, tell the people who need to know. I am not the programmer. There's no possible way I could have broken this. Rock on. Their issue now."
I hunkered down to finish up what I needed to do while Pinmonkey's "Barbed Wire and Roses" played. Oddly enough, the lyrics did fit my current work situation incredibly well. This is leaving scars. I have now discovered, first hand, in peculiarly brutal fashion, what self-sacrifice and doing what is best for my co-workers actually does. That will never happen again. I'm still bleeding out from this one. Painful lesson learned, internalized, and committed to memory. It will heal. I'm too strong to let it stay raw for much longer. I could let it make me afraid and angry. I won't. They just need to understand that I trusted them. I didn't know how misguided that trust was until it was violated. I know now. I learn from my mistakes. Thinking I wouldn't is their mistake.
Before my thoughts got too dark and started twisting in on themselves, I was rescued by "Earthman" by Poets and Pornstars. It's one of those songs-no, that's not right, it's THE song, that really makes me feel a transcendent sensation of being connected to the Universe. I can breathe to that song. I can let my heart soar and my mind drift to that song and not have to spend a second worrying about where they'll go. It's always to a good place. It's the song that I can listen to and just Let Things Go. I know that carrying that stress hurts me. It hurts my writing. It hurts every bit of art that I create. That's how I get it to stop. My characters are my babies. Letting someone else hurt them outside the realm of fiction is unthinkable. I listened to that song. Every time I hear it, I always really listen to it. It's not listening with my ears or my brain, it's deeper than that. I feel that song. It opens up my heart and comforts me to my soul.
Sometimes, I really need that.