Most people who grow up in loving, functional families and have relatively happy childhoods get to rely on those connections as a foundation for their whole lives.  They are the main cable threads in the tapestry of their lives.  Unfortunately, I did not get to benefit from such a family situation.  In the absence of family ties and social circles to form the underpinning of my life, I wound up relying on other sources to weave my life tapestry.

There have been three major life-cables that braid together and form the backbone of my tapestry: cats, books, and music.  Cats have been a presence in my life since I was a baby, and in the absence of a loving family and caring friends, cats became both family and friends.  I have been the privileged owner of many cats over the course of my life, and each one brought something special to my life regardless of how long they were with me.

Books were the kindling for my burgeoning intellect when I was 3 years old, the age at which I first began reading simple illustrated chapter books.  The first book I made it all the way through was about a raccoon who forgot how to chew (temporarily of course).  I can still see some of the images from the book in my mind.  This would kick off a lifelong love of reading, especially Stephen King books as well as a wide variety of non-fiction titles.  I drink knowledge from books like a thirsty person drinks water.  Like the cats, books were friends when I had no one else, and indeed, much reading was done with a cat in attendance.

Then there’s the music.  Due to my own mother’s love of music, it was a constant presence in my life from birth.  If the radio wasn’t on, she was playing albums from the 60s and 70s.  When I was around 4 years old, I began to pester her to play my favorite songs, over and over again in the manner of all small children.  When she tired of this after a couple of years and got a new stereo, I was gifted with her old Pioneer hi-fi along with the Beatles red and blue compilations and a few of her other albums suitable for a 6-year-old.  It played records, 8-track tapes, had a radio, and it was all mine.  It was the best gift I had ever received in my young life.  When I wasn’t playing my own music, Mom was always playing hers.  I grew up listening to Gordon Lightfoot, Simon & Garfunkel, Judy Collins, Bob Seger, AC/DC, Boston, Styx, Heart, Kansas, Blue Oyster Cult, and Elton John in addition to my Beatles and Beach Boys albums.

When I was ten and entered middle school, it was time to sign up for beginning band, which I desperately wanted to do.  My first instrument choice was the oboe, but they only allowed two new oboes per year and the slots were already filled.  My next choice was drums, but my mother immediately put the kibosh on that under the pretense of not being able to handle the noise.  My third choice was saxophone, but the band director felt that I had an embouchure more suited for the french horn, which meant a semester of playing the cornet first.

I hated it.  I hated it so much that after only a few weeks, I stopped practicing and defiantly turned in my practice sheets with big fat zeroes written into each day while vocally proclaiming my desire to play saxophone.  Finally, after a few weeks of this, the band director relented and allowed me to join the saxophone class, admonishing me that I would need to catch up because it was already several weeks into the school year.  Delighted that I had stubbornly gotten my way, I nodded vigorously and promised I would do so.

I was so happy when we went to the music store to pick out my new saxophone.  Part of the reason I wanted to play it was because it was the most beautiful instrument in the entire band to me, with its graceful curves and sensual sounds.  When we got it home, I held it and fingered the mother-of-pearl keys.

Catching up with the other kids in the saxophone class wasn’t difficult because I had taught myself how to read music and play the recorder the year before, which actually put me ahead of everyone else in that regard.  It was how I had busied myself while my parents were at work all day.  The fingerings were basically the same on the saxophone and the recorder, so all I had to do was learn the differences between the two instruments.  Within only a couple of weeks, I was up to speed with the others.

For the first two years, I played the alto saxophone, which is what new students learn on.  However, in the 8th grade, I was invited to play the tenor saxophone, which is larger with a lower pitch, and was gifted for the year with a brand-new Yamaha professional model saxophone.  It.was.gorgeous, with filigreed scrollwork etched into the brass bell and the most beautiful deep tone.  I adored it, and took the best care possible of it, constantly polishing it of its fingerprints.

While I was learning how to play music myself, I continued to build my young listening repertoire, mostly by listening to the radio.  Eventually, though, I started building my own record collection of music independent of my mother’s tastes.  I added Def Leppard and Duran Duran to my listening, and later the more mature themes of the progressive band Rush, the latter largely spurred by watching MTV.

Middle school saw me attend my first concert ever: Journey, the Frontiers tour on July 3 1983 at the Summit in Houston.  I was 11.  My mother took me along with the older sister of a friend of mine.  In hindsight, I bet my creepy stepfather was supposed to go but they had a fight or something and she took the friend’s sister instead, which chapped my own friend’s ass a bit.

Then came high school, and with it, marching band.  I had the luck of going to a school with an award-winning band, if for no other reason than the head band director could be a bit of a slave driver.  He would accept nothing less than excellence, but as a result, our band routinely won district, state, regional, and even placed 2nd in national competitions.

My freshman year, I continued to play the tenor saxophone.  Learning how to march and play at the same time was a unique trick of coordination that I actually found rather fun.  I enjoyed the disciplined and regimented style of marching band, which was militaristic with its lockstep pacing, need for salutes, drum line, and color guard.

We went with the football team to each Friday night game whether it was at home or away, so I grew used to the size of standard Texas high school football stadiums.  District competitions typically took place at a larger high school football stadium, but regional competitions drew far more bands from farther away and required leveling up to college football stadiums.

My first encounter with this was for the regional championship held at Rice University in Houston, Texas.  I had ridden past the stadium many times so I was familiar with it, or so I thought.  What I didn’t know was that only the upper half of the stadium was visible from ground level.  The lower half was below ground level, so it was a bit of a shock to walk down the ramp to perform our show and see not one, but two massive levels of the stadium towering over me.

This would be good preparation for a month later when the entire 200 member band plus a lot of chaperones flew to Indianapolis for the national championships, which took place in the city’s professional football stadium and was even larger than the college stadium.  Despite having an outstanding show that was put together by a professional drum corps show designer, we were three points shy of winning 1st place.  However, we took best drum line, and when we walked off the field after our final performance, many of us were in tears because we knew we had given our absolute best, and we could feel it.

My musical involvement with the band in my sophomore and junior years was restricted to concert season as I had joined the colorguard for marching season, spending one year as a flag and another as one of the elite rifle squad.  Marching and concert season overlapped one another, so as one was both ramping up with final competitions and then wrapping up, the other was ramping up for the holiday concert and springtime concert competitions along with solo and ensemble work.

I had done well with solo and ensemble work in middle school, winning two 2nd place medals (one solo, one ensemble), and another 1st place solo medal, which I deserved as I had worked very hard on that piece, almost to the point of memorization.  However, my home life prevented me from focusing as intently on my music as I once had in middle school.  I still enjoyed participating in band and it was an important aspect of my life, but I wasn’t as dedicated as I had once been.  Still, it was the only pleasurable part of my life.

During my marching band years, the music I was listening to was heavily influenced by the few friends that I had.  One boy in particular, Pat, was kind and cute, and I had a terrible crush on him, which he was nice enough not to disparage.  Instead, before he left for college, he came over with his tape collection and allowed me to make as many copies as I liked, at which point I dipped my toes into progressive rock such as Pink Floyd, and electronic ambient music such as Tangerine Dream and Mike Oldfield.  Pat also introduced me to Marillion, an obscure progressive band that has remained a favorite for decades.  I also gained an appreciation for U2 during these years, playing Boy and War repeatedly along with The Joshua Tree and The Unforgettable Fire.

My second concert was Mr. Mister in my freshman year, which we were able to attend because my stepfather called up a radio station and did what was called “beg and plead” for what the stations kept as free tickets.  It was he, my mother, my friend from colorguard, and myself.  I had a great time, especially since the tickets were front and center.  The venue was also inside an amusement park, so my friend and I were able to have fun on the rides and such before and after the show.

I leveled up my musical maturity for my next concert, which was Pink Floyd on their Momentary Lapse of Reason tour in 1987, their first musical tour in years following the departure of Roger Waters from the band.  This show took place in the old Astrodome in Houston, which had five mezzanines and held tens of thousands of people.  It was also the first concert I attended with friends and not my mother.

I also continued to obsessively listen to Rush, collecting as much of their music as I could.  In 1988, I finally had an opportunity to see what had become my favorite band on the Hold Your Fire tour, something I would repeat 11 more times between that year and 2014, when they held their 40th anniversary tour.  Their shows seemed to improve with age, as though they emerged from their long hiatus during Neil Peart’s Ghost Rider years between 1998-2001 with a renewed appreciation and energy despite, or perhaps because of, the grief of his losses.

Later in ‘88, I met my first serious boyfriend, who happened to be a metal head, at which point I began listening to Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Metallica, Anthrax, Slayer, and The Cult, amongst others.  Iron Maiden’s Powerslave tour was my very first metal show, at which I gave myself a serious case of whiplash induced by head-banging.  It also coincided with being 16, which meant I was being a rebellious asshole like all 16-year-olds, something my controlling mother could not tolerate.  She was also having a midlife crisis, and the combination of conflicting energies between myself and my parents eventually resulted in my moving in with my boyfriend and his parents after I was kicked out by both parents when I was 17.

During these same years I was listening to heavy metal, I also developed an appreciation for pop music, enjoying Madonna and Paula Abdul.  I also liked some hair metal bands, like Motley Crue and Dokken, much to the mockery of my boyfriend and his pals.  However, I’ve always had a “fuck off, I like this song” kind of attitude when it comes to my musical tastes, so I’ve spent my life listening to what I want to.  I’m just doing it alone a lot of the time.

When I was 19, I left my boyfriend and got my own place, at which point my musical tastes branched out thanks to the radio and friends.  Depeche Mode and New Order filled the hole that Duran Duran left, Peter Gabriel filled a hole I didn’t know existed when a friend turned me onto the Passion soundtrack to The Last Temptation of Christ, and later the grunge movement gave me Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice In Chains as an evolution of heavy metal.

I also got into industrial music at this time, first through Ministry and Front 242, and later through what would become my other lifelong favorite band: Nine Inch Nails.  In 1993, the penultimate year of my first ill-fated marriage, I spent nearly every night after my ex went to bed out driving the Hill Country on twisty roads while listening to Pretty Hate Machine over and over and over again.  That record is buried in my bone marrow now.

The next year, The Downward Spiral was released with the Self Destruct Tour following.  The band came through town on October 29, 1994, just days before my birthday and less than a week after I had finally left my husband.  It was a welcome diversion from a very stressful time, and given the intensity of the music, the concert itself was a cathartic outpouring of energy on my part that felt glorious.  TDS replaced PHM as my primary listening, at least until I discovered broken, the EP that came out between the other two.

NIN’s music was more accessible to me emotionally than Rush had become, which makes sense as the members were quite a bit older than me.  While Rush was almost like going to school where all of the lessons were taught in music, NIN spoke to my darker side in a way I didn’t know needed speaking for in much the same way Peter Gabriel had filled a hole I didn’t know existed.

If NIN represented the harsh darkness in my life, then the dulcet Irish tones of Enya were its direct antithesis.  I had embarked on a pagan path by this time of my life, and this lilting music from the Emerald Isle just enchanted me on a level I didn’t understand until much later in life when I learned of my own Irish and Celtic heritage.

Almost exactly a year after leaving my ex, I met my present husband, with whom I have been happily married for 23 years and together for 30.  At this time, what turned out to be two very eclectic music collections were ‘married’ and we each exposed the other to new music and discovered we also had quite a bit of music in common, such as Ministry.  When we met, I added Sting, Sarah McLachlan, Machines of Loving Grace, Talking Heads, Brian Eno, and Was Not Was to my library.  I also picked up listening to electronic rave music during these years, such as The Chemical Brothers, The Crystal Method, The Prodigy and anything else that sounded like them.

My love of Peter Gabriel’s album Passion exposed me to the record label Six Degrees in the mid-to-late 90s, which put out a great deal of world music.  At this time, my then-boyfriend-now-husband and I began collecting these albums and became huge fans of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, a Pakistani singer.  We had no idea what he was saying, but his voice was incredible, as was the accompanying drumming and other instrumentality.

That opened the door to a veritable flood of music from the rest of the planet, after which I quickly learned that I love virtually all other forms of music, although I favor drumming.  In fact, at the time of this writing, over the decades, I have managed to collect no fewer than six hand drums (take that, Mom).  However, there are a few world artists from particular regions that I adore, such as Natacha Atlas and Sheila Chandra from India, Niyaz from Pakistan, and the MIDIval PunditZ, who do a lot of Indian remixes.

A lot of the variety in my musical collection comes from my old friend Doyle, who always has his musical toes dipped in some very interesting ponds.  We have an appreciation for each other’s tastes and have shared music with one another for decades.  We each know that “music saves lives”.  How many people have made it through the darkest night of their lives with a particular commiserating song on endless repeat, with the only thing keeping them alive being the promise of another bit of feel-better dopamine and oxytocin the next time the song plays?

Somehow, sometime in the mid-90s, I fell out of the loop with what NIN was doing.  I wasn’t even aware there was any new music until With Teeth came out in 2005, by which point I had missed at least two albums, including The Fragile.  I was eyeball-deep in parenting by this time, though, so I parked a couple of his songs on one of my mix discs I kept in my truck and kept muddling through my life.

I didn’t give NIN another thought until Doyle informed me in 2013 there was a new album, Hesitation Marks, and an upcoming tour: Tension.  I immediately bought a copy of the CD and made plans to attend the show later in the year.  I liked the album, although I could tell that the musical style had shifted over the years.  Less screaming, more whispering.  I told myself to catch up on the rest of his work, and then promptly dropped into The Zombie Years and did nothing at all until 2018.  For four solid years, I didn’t listen to music, not at home anyway.  My world went silent.

Then I ‘woke up’ in May 2018, and suddenly listening to music was all that I wanted to do.  I practically bathed in it from the time I got up until I went to sleep at night, and even then I left something quiet playing as a musical accompaniment to my slumber, typically the soundtracks to Bladerunner and Solaris.  In the weeks and months following waking up, I made, unmade, and merged dozens of playlists, plus rediscovered some older ones I had left behind before The Zombie Years.

Since then, my musical tastes have diverged widely.  There is now very little that I will not listen to, a list that includes honkytonk country & western, racist metal (or racist/sexist anything, thanks very much), and auto-tune pop music.  I have branched into country music through a number of female artists, most notably KD Lang, Shawn Colvin, and the Cowboy Junkies, plus Melissa Etheridge and Bonnie Raitt.

That gap between myself and the world of country was bridged by an unlikely musician: Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, who collaborates with Alison Krauss, a country musician.  They make some of the loveliest music I’ve ever heard, and I’m glad I encountered it, since it showed me a different side of a musical genre I have always shunned.  I was blessed to see them play live where I live now when someone at church had a pair of tickets to sell.

“What does all of this have to do with music saving lives?”, you may be asking yourself.  If you are, I envy you your life.  You’ve never had a song as the only thing standing between yourself and Death.  Never had a song as the only thing telling you that you’re beautiful and worthy of being alive because there aren’t any people in your life to do so.  Never spent dusk to dawn with the same album on repeat as your only companion through the longest night of your life.  Never silently whispered prayers of gratitude for your favorite musician as distant, unknowing shepherds through your Valley of Darkness.

Music is so much more than mere entertainment.  Music is a living thing with breath and a heartbeat.  Along with heat and light, sound is the third intangible but necessary component of energetic creation.  The Sanskrit name of the heart chakra, anahata, means “the unstruck sound”.  Without the thumping rhythm of our hearts, the swish of our blood through our veins, the whisper of our breath through our lungs, we are not alive.  That is the music of Life itself embedded in our flesh, and it comes out in the music of Nature, including us.

There are primordial drum patterns that emerge spontaneously during drum circles that are populated by enough experienced drummers.  I’ve heard them manifest repeatedly across multiple circles over decades despite there never being any pre-thought intent as to what was going to be played.  We simply gathered together, and started playing.  Each time was unique, yet underlaid by this repeating pattern that I could always hear thumping in my ears after going home, like the heartbeat of the Universe itself.

Making rhythmic, melodic, and harmonious noise together to scare away predators at night and comfort ourselves in the darkness around a fire, and perhaps even before fires, has to be one of humanity’s oldest activities.  It is something that virtually every single human being can participate in on some level, whether they are playing an instrument by banging rocks together, or by singing, the natural instrument that we all carry.

To seek solace in music in times of despair is one of humanity’s oldest traditions.  Family and loved ones sing laments at funerals the world over.  It is a life-affirming and binding activity in the face of death, not to mention comforting.  Laments are musical avenues for grief to be expressed.

The dark music we listen to in the modern era is no different.  They too are laments done in screeching guitars, wailing vocals, piercing keyboards, and pounding drums.  Laments for childhoods lost to abuse, romances lost to betrayal, futures lost to brazen, terrible lies.  These are the songs that keep my generation company in the darkness, the songs that set us apart from the generation before us because we refused to keep silent about our pain.

These are the songs that keep us alive.