Oh hey, are you reading this?  Then my guess is you, too, are no stranger to disappointment or depression.  Are you human?  Alright then.  We’ve all been there – you got some less-than-good news, you had a bit of a soul-crushing defeat, someone you love has left you in one way or another – your friends see that you’ve put on a fucking smile anyway and then you know, you still gotta pay the stupid car insurance and go to work and buy toilet paper.  How do we keep going?  There are many answers to this complex question, and while I am a big fan in recent years of really feeling all the feels and figuring out why I feel the way I do and what, if any, action I can take, there are days when you just have to slap a motherfucking band-aid on that shit and say to life “WHAT ELSE.”

While you may really need that band-aid, I propose the theory that there is one thing that is that, but maybe more:  Music.

Music can get you out of a mood, put you in a mood, cause you to explore that mood, or shut out everything in your life that is just not a thing you can deal with right the fuck now.  As I blasted The Cult’s “Love Removal Machine” on the way to work this morning, I followed it with Deftones, Marilyn Manson, and Pantera just to get some fucking anger out of the way.  We all have our own thing.  There will be a moment in the next 48 hours in which I will probably sit bawling in my car to OH YOU FUCKING NAME IT, because my Spotify is filled with shit that will make you cry.  (Of course, when the dance-able joy of New Order’s “1963” makes me get teary, it doesn’t take much. Lyrics can hit me in the breadbasket.)

What I am trying to say is that for me, music is a key that can unlock numerous doors, or lock them back up if need be.  Sometimes you don’t know exactly what you need until that perfect song hits you.  There are other times where you know that if you roll all the windows down and turn up the volume, you’ll be allowed, in that space, to feel exactly what you need to feel.

Turn up the volume.  Either way, that guy next to you at the light totally wins.