Facing The Music

Ok so it's time I nailed this once and for all: I am a maker of MUSIC. So what if my method isn't conventional, and if to others it's barely comprehensible. It is what it is, and it's mine.

This came to a head tonight, and in a way I'm glad it did. I got very agitated about someone coming round tomorrow, as I don't get to see too many people too often. So I'm scampering around my head at my usual million miles an hour, fretting about how I'm going to handle the whole situation. Broadly speaking, I have 3 different techniques to try and reduce my anxiety. The first is to stay on top of it and "hold my nerve", so to speak. The second is to let go and try to keep the thoughts as dim and distant as possible. And the third is simply to surrender to it and accept it; the theory being that if I'm upset about it then I'm not scared. The comfort of being sad I suppose.

But what happens in heightened states of anxiety is that while my thoughts are racing, the 3 techniques are all contradicting each other and vying for supremacy inside my head. The net result is that none of the above can ever truly take hold, because there are always agitated forces within me compelling me to settle in a different frame of mind instead. And of course, the fatal flaw with all of the above is that while I'm using these techniques to try and control my anxiety, then I'm thinking about it all the time.

So tonight I was racking my brains, and it drove me to the edge of despair. Yes these techniques reduce my anxiety, but what will make it go away? And then it hit me: the music does. The music in my head makes it all go away. So then I started to listen, and it all came flooding back. When I listen to the music in my head, I'm not anxious anymore. When I listen to the music in my head, no-one...no anxiety, no people, no expectations, can touch me. Because when I'm listening to the music in my head, I'm not listening to the voices. I'm listening to the voice.

And armed with this not-so-new realisation, it suddenly occurred to me just what an immense privilege it is to hear music in my head. I'm almost ashamed to say that I'd never thought of it like that before. Because it's always been such a noose around my neck, I've always considered it more of a curse than a blessing. But think about it: I have a schizoid mind, yet that schizoid mind is prevented from becoming schizophrenic by music. Music is the glue that holds it all together, and without that glue I fall apart. And that's when it hit me, for the first time in years, just what an immensely powerful tool I have here. And I have to say that it re-ignited something within me that really should never have gone out.

It seems to me that fragmentative illnesses such as schizophrenia can only truly be cured by universals. That is to say, the stuff that addresses each of the fragments, while retaining the constancy of the core message. The idea being that although you're addressing the many, you're simultaneously addressing the one. And as far as I can see, there are three such universals in life. The first is love, but unfortunately universal love is something that many fragmented minds have little or no first-hand experience of. Maybe it has been offered to them, but for whatever reason they have felt unable or unwilling to accept. The second universal is math, and by that I mean math in it's purest and most mystical form. Now while there is no denying that such math holds a peculiar fascination for the fragmented mind, it can also be a bit too complicated for tired minds to get around.

And the third universal? That'll be music then.