Those moments

There is only one thing greater than that moment: you're working away, just listening to music in the background. This particular playlist is your "upbeat" playlist; the one you play towards the end of a Friday, to give you the energy to keep working until 5:00 at your dead-end job.

Then That Song comes on. It could be one of several, but at that moment it feels like the only song ever written. Your plan to keep working by listening to music backfires in the most wonderful way—you're so captivated by your music, you can't think of anything else. There's nothing in the world that can pull you away from the feeling the song gives you. These songs are usually the "singles" on an album—really catchy, uplifting songs. The ones where you buy the whole album, and it's pretty good, but then that one song plays, the anamoly, that incredible gem that the songwriters themselves couldn't conjecture how the song came to be. Maybe the muses are real, if for only that one song. Finding that song, especially after you've forgotten it, buried deep in your playlist... hearing that song again for the first time is hands down the second-greatest feeling a person could possibly have.

The greatest feeling in the world is when it's a song you wrote.

What the fuck am I doing here? What possible value does this job have to culture? What contribution am I making to anyone in the world by typing addresses into a computer? What strides has our civilization made, in having companies whose sole purpose is to give the richest 5% (that's my client base) a little extra luxury that they don't even need? Could that possibly be more valuable than sharing songs like this with the world?

Some songs I write purely for myself. Introspective songs that mean something personal, something special, to me. This isn't one of those songs. This is a song I pored over for 2½ years, adjusting, altering, stealing from other songs, to make the perfect beast. It's a process I've only gone through 3 or 4 times in my life; most of my songs are written in an afternoon, and only slightly modified over the years. This was an intentional effort, with the express purpose of making something wonderful.

For what? For me? How is that of any value? Even if I tried getting the song out to the world, it would never reach open ears, drowned out by the literally millions of cheap one-off efforts from high school kids who have been deluded into thinking that all you have to do to make it in the music world is to be more persistent and ornery than everyone else. People get so soured to new music that by their 24th birthday, they call it a lifetime and spend the next 50 years listening to all the songs they remember from their youth. They won't open up to new songs. And for the under-24 crowd... well, even if they did still listen to rock music, how would they know that I'm not just another pushy obnoxious kid with a guitar, trying to force myself on them like a pubescent teen in eyeshot of a D cup? One of the most common compliments I get from people is "this is really good... I'm surprised!" The surprise comes from the presumption that it will be terrible, and they listen to it begrudgingly because they figure I won't leave them alone unless I do.

Well, you know what? I'll tell you right now that I have a handful of songs, maybe 5 or 6, that are fucking wonderful. I don't just think so, you think so. You just don't know it. And if you think you're open to listening to them, that you'll give them a shot, well... fuck you. My culture doesn't want me, so I don't want my culture. You can continue your life with your soul a little emptier than mine. Just writing this blog has pissed me off, but I'll be over it in 5 minutes and 13 seconds.

I have the remedy for a darkened soul.