Anything can be said about music and it will be at least partially true. One instant music is the most juvenile embarrassment and the next thing it's saving the world, pulling a tear from Camus' philosophy.

I hate music, just like I hate all art, but am compelled to return to it and beg like a baby chickadee helpless in a nest.

For me it's a soundtrack to playing Mortal Kombat on my brother's bed, in middle school with a best friend, singing along to Nirvana. Or cruising the sandy pine stands of Maine, sharing Phish with my family in a moment of no responsibility and beautiful landscape.

If I was in control, which is one of my qualms with music, I would muse on Bob Dylan who 'wrote the soundtrack to the '60's'. Or MF Doom, whom hardly anybody has gave a listen past his fast-paced, gruff, strands of ill-used imagery. "Is this guy rapping about anything?"

I've been asked many times while sharing my favourite. "Of course� not. But� that question doesn't MEAN anything� what? �don't ask that sort of thing." It's either everything or nothing, with meaning, and people often decide too soon.

The deepest truth I can share is that I've held a love which opened the world. It destroyed things like ego, and now it's gone and I've been with a shut mouth and wandering for� too long. This love is disappearing and now vaguely reminds me of music, in general� her music, in specific. And that music controls me. I can't control it. It controls me and drops me twelve pitches more sombre. I'm attracted to it like Drink� my own music is crack, if compared:

Mama's in the basement cooking up the medicine, I'm on the pavement, thinking about the government. A man in a coon-skin cap and a pig-pen wants 11 dollar bills and you only got 10.

There's feds at the door, oh it's just fed-ex, I thought I heard walkie-talkies, must be them red-neck neighbours of mine, they fucking with their CB, and we in the spot watching cops on tv, blazing greens, thumping BIG fist cd, drinking on E, hoping pigs don't see. If they were psychic they'd try to give us the electric chair. It's getting hectic in here. And it's an election year.

Verse by Dylan and Doom float in my head, but so much more prevalent and persistent� so much more draining and fulfilling is what she introduced to me and left me with. Empty, hollow, feelings of want and regret, possibility and failure, ignited with one of the many sad plopping songs she deposited in my iTunes and I return to as she's three states away doing God know what. These are the songs in my folder with her name as the genera. And these are the songs I stumble through an explanation for when sharing music� "oh.. I don't know� there, uh, not mine� uh, old girlfriend?" I ask, but those are the songs which will remain in the folder the longest, containing the strongest memories.

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Mr Van Noord is the founder of the non-profit, Ideas of Wild, which has recently joined the renowned, Absurd Fish Coalition in attempts to bring its message to a larger audience. Mr Van Noord currently lives in Salt Lake City where he is in constant battle with amazing forces of arrogant, malicious, and willful ignorance. He is considering a bid for state senate. Inquiries should be directed here. To read a selection of Joel�s writing on the showcase section of this site, click here

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© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.