Alone at night with music and mania

Music, like all art, tints all of life with the dramatic and zeal. In music, love is always life−altering and mountain−moving and flowers in the air. The lovers in songs are always giving over all of themselves to the other person, completely relinquishing their own wants and needs and thoughts for the better of the other.

In love songs, there is no misunderstanding or doubt, only certainty, 100 percent of the time.

I think I based my understanding and knowledge of love on what I heard in songs, because for much of my young life, I've no more immediate example.

For a long time, I thought falling in love was something like "Faithfully," by Journey or "When a Man Loves a Woman," by Percy Sledge. I thought love−making was exactly like "Colorblind," by The Counting Crows or "Crash Into Me," by The Dave Matthews Band. Friendship was exactly like Bill Withers' "Lean On Me" and moving in together would be just like "Fast Car," by Tracy Chapman ...

Sometimes, love is as music shows it, but sometimes it is not. Even the most adamant husbands and wives doubt and worry and question sometimes. Love−making is sometimes as awkward and funny as it is beautiful. Friends can't help you through everything, though they can most times, and love, as much as we'd like it to, does not pay the bills. It does not fix the sink or put gas in the car.

— Justin A. Hinkley, April 3, 2008, Rock Column

Hunter Thompson once wrote that you know you're in trouble when you start quoting yourself. I'm in deep, I think, because I've made a useless art form out of that vice.

I quote myself all the time, because I think some of the things I say need to be said more than once. I think maybe if I say it again, someone will hear it, and it will make a difference. Someone will, instead of putting their fist through a wall or a pill down their throat, will put on a pair of headphones, as I have, and see different horizons of this stupid little life we all live and be OK.

What's the definition of insanity? Saying the same things over and over and expecting different results.

But I keep on keeping on, getting a little more stupid with love for all this music that always loves me back. I once said that it takes a very particular kind of person to need something as ultimately trivial as pop songs, and I was cut from that mold. The gods threw out that mold long ago, finally finding its defects after 40 years of quality control research. I am one of the last.

Which makes it all the more peculiar, particular, unique and lonely. The kind of lonely where I can't stand to see all this pretty white snow just two days before Christmas. And I'm not in the mood for carols. I want The Kinks: "This time tomorrow, where will be? On a spaceship somewhere, sailing across an empty sea ..."

I feel caught in a circle, like using a drug to try to calm the pain of withdrawal, knowing that hours from now the stomach shakes will come again. Have you ever felt that? It makes you want to scream.

But still I long for my guitar, which always loves me, and my Everclear, which never leaves. My guitar is always silently admiring me and knowing what things can come from us, and Everclear coming dirty out of my ear phones knows where I've been, where I am, and screams always "I SURVIVED!"

But then love, and loving music, does not pay the bills, fix the sink or put gas in the car. No matter how loud you turn it.