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It was around the time that puberty kicked in when I resolved to make a serious effort to learn how to play music--guitar specifically. All the horomones of pubesence turned music into something different then. At the time, I had fallen in love with Third Eye Blind's self-titled album in particular. It felt like a narratrion of my 10/11 year-old pre-teen emotional turmoil. Everything I needed was in there and then some. That album was pivotal in making me realize how people can connect emotionally through music; how complex and subtle emotions, moods, and atmospheres can be expressed and shared in musical experiences. My purpose in learning guitar was to be able to move people with music in this way.
As you might expect, that doesn't come quickly to a neophyte--at least it didn't for me. I was not naturally talented when it came to music, but I was also not tone deaf. I had a good enough musical sense to be first-chair trumpet in the school band the year before, until I broke my instrument, that is, but that's another post for another day. My story of success is not one of natural ability, but brute passion and desire. I wanted to play guitar SO BAD, and in a real pubescent sense, I needed it. I worked so hard at it, and I loved it. And eventually I got better. By the time I was in high school, I was good enough that people wanted to hear me play. I had started performing wherever I could, and had built up some confidence in songwriting.
The first time I ever emotionally moved anyone with music was my sophomore year of high school. There was a girl who was moving away. I didn't really know her well, but she was close with some new friends I had made in high school. I had a class with her, and so I thought it would be nice to write her a farewell tune to play on her last day. The song itself was not an amazing song, but it just so happens that it was kind of the zenith of a particular phase in my songwriting development. It was very much the kind of song I was into and had been trying to write for so long, and it was comfortable to play and sing, which meant that I could perform it well enough to do the musical idea justice.
So I played it with a friend of mine at the end of class on her last day. And when we finished, I realized that all the girls in the class were crying, and this girl in particular was totally choked up. It was kind of a surreal moment. I felt disembodied from that whole experience, like it was happening, but not to me. Anyway, she came and gave me a big hug and it was a whole scene and then I completely fell in love with her. But that's also another story for another day.
Moving people to tears with your music never really gets old. There is an interesting kind of reverence involved---not a reverence for the artist per se, but more for the situation, for our humanity. I think this is because it is such a humiliating and grounding experience. I would say the majority of the times I have moved people to tears with music have been in sitations with loved ones. I remember crying a lot playing my old songs with family when I first left home. Things were always very emotional when I would return home before being swept away again by my wanderlust. It felt good to reach those emotional peaks through songs that came to mean so much to us over time. It made it feel like we were really there, together.
In general, I myself am very easily moved by music and art in general. There are certain songs that always get me choked up, and not necessarily sad ones either. Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror," or Jimi Hendrix's live Voodoo Chile take on Electric Lady Land come to mind. I remember as a kid, my brother and I would play this kind of "game" where we would take turns singing along to a song as passionately as possible in order to make ourselves cry. It sounds weird writing that, but I think many people have experienced the overwhelming effect that singing passionately can have. It can make for great performances, but it can also be debilitating.
This was the case during my dad's memorial. We decided to do a big campout at the lake in his honor. This was a few months after he passed, when all of us kids could come home at the same time. There was a lot of emotion in need of an outlet then, and I think we all anticipated some kind of release or closure at the memorial. I thought that singing together like we used to would be the medicine we all needed, and that we would reminisce and laugh and cry about old times. Under normal circumstances, I would be the one to get up and give a speech and play some songs to get everyone singing. But I couldn't make it through a single song without becoming a blubbering mess. I felt paralyzed. It got to a point that it was too emotionally exhausting to even bring myself to play a single chord.
Trying to play anything that night felt like going out in the sun with a day-old sunburn. Like I was too raw to make myself more vulnerable.
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