4:13 am

Another moment of reflection on my part having found this. It's not often that I put dates on little 'dabbles' that happen late at night. I don't remember much of that year, or if anything had happened to inspire this. I have suffered from insomnia for a long time, and a lot of that time was spent writing for hours into the night. On this instance I woke up early in the morning.

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4:13 AM. 11/24/16/

It’s very early in the morning and I woke up with an overwhelming desire to which I can not pinpoint. I’ve fumbled it over and over and over and over, but the source of my subconscious pushing me awake can’t be found. So I decided to listen to music, and it’s nights like these that made me wish I didn’t listen to music in the first place.

I’m torn between whether it saved me or ruined me. Songwriters write songs about how they think and whom they love, they are poetic and their poetry is justified. Their expression of feelings is twisted into lyrics that echo in my frame of mind. Normal people don’t talk the way some songwriters do, nor do they think the same. We can all agree that artists of any kind have a certain way of expression that some may not understand. Singers, writers, painters.

To get back to the point - music makes you feel a certain way. It’s supposed to make you feel a certain way. I genuinely know that as humans we have little to no control over how we feel about certain situations. And I also believe that music can make us feel a certain way; thus controlling the kind of emotion we have. So, with that in mind, we can choose to feel happy or sad or mad about nothing in particular - the song makes us feel that way. The songwriter doesn’t mean to make us angry or sad - they write because they are angry or sad. When you express some form of art you are putting your thoughts and feelings out, and they may affect other people.

And you know, I wish My Chemical Romance knew they got me through high school. I wish Stevie Nicks knew she taught me it’s okay to feel bitter about men that leave you. I wish Brandi Carlisle knew she was my introduction into indie music. I wish Conor Oberst knew a new album of his would come out exactly when I needed to hear it.

I guess what I am trying to say here is music is one of the best and worst things that could have possibly happened to me. I’m the person who gets excited when someone says “this song makes me think of you” and then further breaks it down and analyzes every word. Yet I’m the one who’s too afraid to send songs in return. We simply live in a generation where expressing ourselves in a personal matter can be weird. Especially in situations where it may be too soon to do so, or not the right time, or the wrong place.

As humans I will probably be one of few to say that we completely suck at communication and expressing how we feel if we aren’t a songwriter, or a painter, or a writer. Hell, even artists sometimes don’t know how to express things sometimes. Yet, those who have trouble look to their work for condolence, for answers. I often find myself looking at music for answers, and I've yet to find any that I was not already looking for. But at least looking for them helps some.