Music, man. That shit just does something to your soul. Clichés abound about taming wild dragons to go around a bout that may cost too much. I’ve encountered a handful of people over the years that do not have this super intimate and personal bond with music. It exists and they have music they enjoy, but it doesn’t fill their cup. It serves a purpose during driving or background whitenoise at work.

I can’t imagine not having music fill as much of my life as possible. I’ve shared so many concerts with friends and family. I’ve made friends at concerts. I’ve met bands hanging out in the grass at festivals watching the headliners. I worked to attend two massive festivals with one of my bestfriends on insane 18+hr drives across the desert each way. Hell, my good ol’ boy Boodah attended more concerts and met more musicians than many people I’ve known personally. One person sticks out vividly as saying they had only ever attended 2-3 concerts into their later adulthood.

At that time, I was attending 3-4 concerts a week, every week for over a year. I attended dozens and dozens of shows. I had decided I wanted to spend my money and life on experiences, not objects. What good is owning things if you don’t do anything with them? I have boxes and boxes of movies and video games behind me that I haven’t touched in years, or even decades. What purpose do they serve besides clutter? I have shelves of books I haven’t read, or started and decided not to continue reading.

My music collection differs though. I’ve spent countless hours working on compiling, gathering, and properly labeling almost 11,000 songs from my collection. This digital backup has saved me every time I had CD cases stolen in high school and college. I’m constantly using it, going through it, and trying to share music with people. I have so many obscure songs from box sets and collections that I pride myself on having new stuff to show the biggest fans of music. Most recently, I had “Hyacinth House” by The Doors playing and a buddy with solid knowledge of their music had never heard it. Coincidentally, it is one of my favourite Doors songs.

But going to concerts is more than listening to music. It’s so much more than that. Many things should be experienced first hand because words fail to capture the full experience. And this is not for naught, but rather everyone picks up on different parts of the experience.

Mosh pits at a punk show might serve as a photo opportunity and intentional culture shock through voluntary exposure. And the thing I love about punk shows, is that everyone is fine with it. Take your pictures. Welcome! Enjoy yourself! But when the band starts back up it goes from being the sideshow attraction to the real life experience.

You see people using their bodies to shield others that have fallen to the ground. Everyone scrambles to pick people up from the floor as soon as they fall down. Lost your shoe? Lost your hat? Start looking around and everyone will start helping. If you find a shoe or a hat, you hold it up because somebody clearly lost it.

I’ve been part of crowds where I helped lift a homie and his wheelchair up so that they could get a crowdsurfing experience. I absolutely annihilated my shin when I ran into his chair at the edge of the mosh pit. Shit was fucking bruised and painful for weeks afterwards. But damn was that an amazing Suicidal Tendencies concert.

Even now, a livestream from two of my favourite current musicians quite literally just finished. I had not expected to catch completely unrehearsed and live performances of amazing and even unreleased songs. It contrasts so loudly from the punk show in every sense: two women wearing fancy dresses passing an acoustic guitar back and forth and drinking chai from mason jars.

Both touch different parts of my heart and soul. Both fill the cup in different ways. Not quite like water and oil, but I do like that metaphor that different layers of life fill your cup. Sometimes they mix and overlap, and sometimes there are very strict boundaries and no matter how much you stir things up, they return to normal eventually. The world desires equilibrium and no matter how mixed up everything may be, the cup will still balance out. Sometimes we lose people and opportunities as they spill out. We have to keep moving forward knowing that we will refill our cup again as we have done before.

I always carry headphones in my pocket. I have a philosophy that has proved true repeatedly: through music all things are possible. The blasphemy of it fuels my soul. Jokes aside, I have never been let down by music in the way that life has made me feel hopeless and alone. No matter how dark the days, music is always there. And there are so many amazing artists creating so much amazing music that I want to spend absolutely as much of my life listening to it as possible.