Day 40: Music

I've been meaning to kick off some music recommendation posts on this for a while - but before I did, I wanted to make my stance on music very clear. So, here we are.

We love music, don't we? Everyone loves music. It's on your Facebook profile, it's on your CV. You've got an iPod, you go out dancing. You love music. Except, the thing is... i'm not sure you do.

It's not about listening to the radio, or keeping up with the charts. It's not even about filling your ears with it for every waking moment of the day.

It's not about knowing the names of the people in the band, or being able to reel off a string of trivia about their history. It's not about watching music videos.

It's not about owning the T-shirt, or the fact that you saw them live six years ago at T4-on-the-fucking beach.

Conversely, it's not about owning the rare 1993 EP, or being able to nail that awesome solo on guitar, or knowing all the lyrics to their critically acclaimed seminal album.

Loving music isn't about status, knowledge, or a good tune. Music can remind us of moments of our past, evoking forgotten emotions through this alone.

But there's more than that.

It's about being filled to the brim with an uncontrollable passion. It's about dancing down the elevators, and singing on the tube.

It's about the fire running through your veins. It's about needing to move - be this dancing, convulsing like a maniac, or just fucking sprinting down the road.

It's about letting the music take you. It's about being dragged away to another world, or dancing and singing on the London underground.

It's about looking around the room at a party to find the other grinning people who just clocked THAT bit of the song, because that bit, was fucking amazing.

It's about ascension. It's about becoming and invincible Deity, stomping, skulking, and strutting through your domain without a care in the world.

It can make you want to laugh, and it can make you want to cry. It can make you unimaginably happy. It can make you want to throw your body against a wall in the most brilliant way imaginable.

You'll either get this, or you won't. By this point you'll either be grinning, or you'll think I'm fucking insane. But I just wanted to get this out of the way so we're nice and clear, going forward.

I love music.

Lots.