We all listen to music for different reasons. Better yet, we can never know for sure why someone else listens to music. So, since they are not you, it’s safe to say that their reasons aren’t your reasons. Or mine.

As a kid, music was a therapy for loneliness. For me. Bottom line. I needed it for that reason. The only kind of music that mattered was rock n’ roll. Classical was so sterile, so clean. It brought me nowhere. But rock responded to those pressures which made me lonely: from my family, my peers, myself, and dragged me kicking and screaming to a place where I could feel whole again.

And it did this by doing everything it you weren’t supposed to do. It was loud. You weren’t supposed to be loud. It was vulgar. You weren’t supposed to be vulgar. You see where I am going with this, right? Growing up, I had to do what I was supposed to do. And for some ineffable reason this felt wrong. I felt wrong. And rock, at least temporarily, fixed that.

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