(This should take 3-ish min to read... just about as long as your favorite song... why not pause here and throw it on?)
So my dog Lola is going deaf and, when I come home, Josie pops right up and kisses my shins and all that good stuff but Lola, she stays passed out submerged in her marshmallow bed, and it isn’t until I get super close and almost kick her face that she realizes I’m home, and then yeah Lola kisses my shins and all that good stuff, but it’s just like when you’re trying to talk to someone with the noise-cancelling Air Pods, right like those things have a “go deaf” setting and it’s near impossible to pull people out of their little world without obstructing their vision or tapping them, but hey, at least those people have music circulating in their little world, melodies massaging the brain, which makes me even sadder that my going-deaf-dog will soon only have her sweet, silent thoughts and the fading memory of what her bark sounds like to color the inside of her brain, and not just so she can have a jiggy tune running amuck in her head but maybe her purpose for music is therapy, maybe she has Cage The Elephant’s 2013 “Melophobia” album on shuffle from the moment Mom and Dad leave for work until they walk in the door at supper time, right ‘cause people use music for all sorts of reasons but nevertheless it always has a purpose, whether passing time on a long road trip or getting dressed in the morning and rising on your tippy toes with your arms reaching for the ceiling, letting out a big mmmmhhh ahhh and a chill runs from your pinky toe all the way north to your forehead; or getting over a break up with some 2000’s Taylor Swift or A Great Big World’s “Say Something” on loop until your phone dies; or some heavy base to get your night going while applying your sparkly winged eyeliner on a Saturday night; and don’t even get me started on concerts… belching at the top of your lungs lyrics you’re convinced the artist wrote directly about the ebb and flow of your fantastically-unique life; or café music at 11:27pm to drown out daydreams of your morning cup of coffee while throwing your thoughts on the page for a research paper due at 11:59pm; or my personal favorite: sinking into a well-worn-in, hand-me-down sofa in your teammates’ basement at a rather late—or super early hour depending on how you look at it—blasting stomp-and-holler indie rock folk grunge in XXL tie-dye t-shirts and fuzzy socks knowing every word because it would honestly feel disrespectful to call this your favorite genre without knowing the intro to Mt. Joy’s masterpiece which they dedicated to this basement homeowner, which goes a little like, “Straighten my sweater, fix my spine, step up in line… I’m ordering food high, and I don’t know why, I’m so nervous…” and yeah, we’re all comfy-cozy engulfed in our groovy-Hanes-oversized-band-shirts like the groupies we are, but don’t think for a second we’re ashamed cause we’ll dress it up with some boyfriend jeans, a mock neck undershirt, excessive gold jewelry, and some muted wash of Doc Martens on a brisk autumn day, and we’ll get handfuls of compliments from double-takers walking to class, but they’re hardly complimenting our fashion and way more our music taste cause there’s a cool thing about this indie genre, and that cool thing is that I don’t just admire the electric guitar riffs and random yet genius lyrics like “I got pills to make the hamster wheels turn faster, but the monkey's in the driver's seat,” but even more the culture that accompanies it all, a culture I probably need another whole blog post to attempt to describe, but I’ll try in one word: REAL, and I mean every part from the artist, to the auto-tune (and I mean lack thereof), to the lyrics, to the lead singer’s humility, to the fans in the crowd, to the no-makeup-under-that-gold-jewelry, so Mom… next time I visit home in my indie grunge get-up, are you really going to ask me why I’m wearing such baggy clothes and imply something tighter would be more flattering because I’ll let you know this isn’t a lack of confidence but in fact a statement of confidence, cueing you into the fact that I am real, and I find little curiosity in the tight white tank top that cues you into the shape of my waist but conveys nothing about my music taste, because why would I wear something that says nothing about who’s underneath this groovy, oversized Hanes?