idk back in like the 90s when i was hanging out w my babysitter Jen & her boyfriend Jeff, we’d listen to the best fucking music. i was like 5 or 6 & my sis was 3 or 4. these guys in 8th grade (i thought they were so cool & old at the time & i guess i was trying to be or sound cool & i think i actually was prolly, but whatever not to them… what did they know anyways?) asked me my fav artist. i looked straight at them & said Madonna. it’s funny looking back on it, but she was kind of the shit when she came out with Music. idk i guess she released that album in 2000… the year i moved from the city (SF) to the OC, where my step bros were at. my dad was in Newport so he was close to Laguna & my mom, sis & step dad (along with myself) moved into some place there. it was a cute little run down place we loved & ended up getting remodeled. my fam has pretty good money. doesn’t mean i do. doesn’t mean i jus got handed everything in life. had to always work in some way for what i had. like my dad. like my sis. like my step bros. they wanted us to know the value of a buck. mom’s like to help you out when you help yourself. God’s that way, too. guess i heard that in the new Euphoria season. definitely liked the other seasons more, but this one defs had its moments. jus seemed sad though… angus being gone & then what happened to rue. if anyone’s ever doing drugs, i jus want them to be so pleasantly enjoying themselves with the high & shi. idk who ever fucking invented fentanyl, but fuck that. like i mean, i get some may need it for pain & all that, if dosed minimally in hospitals, but nah please don’t tell me you want to get high off or fuck on that. like no bruh, rather do some pure shit & you could usually always tell who’s trying to hook it up & who’s tryna fuck you. but at this point idk prolly better not to do it. i mean, i could handle the highs & lows pretty well, especially with the history of things & being used to highs & lows with bipolar, pharmaceuticals & way too many substances in the past 10 years, but do i recommend it? hell nah, not really ever, best jus to sip coffee & have a glass of wine after dinner. girls could smoke their spliffs & guys their nicotine. but that’s all not that important… let’s get back to the topic at hand. where was i? oh right, music…
i guess i had to talk about bipolar & drugs because they go hand in hand. like my emotions sometimes peak & i’m up for 2 to 3 nights straight without sleep. other times i jus want to shut my blinds & hide away from the day & the glaring sun shining through, jus praying for cozier clothes & snowfall. with heightened highs & devastating lows, the only cure, the only way out, the only way to cope with, process & make sense of my emotions is throwing all those feelings into some song, some album, some mix, some station. like the intro Kickin Incredibly Dope Shit on Mac Miller’s K.I.D.S. album:
When you’re young, not much matters. When you find something that you care about, then that’s all you got. When you go to sleep at night you dream of MUSIC. When you wake up it’s the same thing. It’s there in your face. You can’t escape it. Sometimes when you’re young the only place to go is inside. That’s just it – MUSIC is what I love. Take that away from me and I really got nothing.
so yea, all i remember really from birth until 5 or 6 was chilling with my babysitter & her bf listening to the coolest collection of CDs in like the late ‘90s & early early early at the turn of the century in the year 2000 (wasn’t even 6 yet… now i’m 32 ugh how’d i even make it — shouldn’t have even survived my 20s with all the shit i went through… totaled two cars, almost OD’d a couple times, etc. i mean a lot of it was the highest high points ever like Ski or Snowboard Club with my ex & the crew in Tahoe outta Davis in 2016… but come on, i shouldn’t have made it). in the late 90s, CDs were the dopest. they still kinda are, at least the highest quality because they are truly lossless & offer something analog & tangible to hold. i mean, chilling with my babysitter, her bf & my sis ofc weren’t the only times i remembered from the last few years of the 20th century, but they held the absolute most significance & were so incredibly vital to my upbringing & early experiences that taught me almost everything i needed to know at the time, along with trips to Giants baseball games with my step dad, going to Spring Training & all that with my step brothers (Katie getting a signed baseball bat by Shawon Dunston. we were all kind of jealous… she deserved it though, by far way cuter. what professional athlete’s going to give something so valuable to anyone other than somebody like my sis… honestly the best person in the universe, my angel & fav person to exist).
in the late 90s, my stepdad & mom both lived in the same cute little apartment complex. Jeff was in apartment 5 i believe & my mom & us in 6… i think & i think it was on Vallejo street, but i forget exact street names. the places were both so cute & we’d head up to the rooftop to catch a glimpse of the Bay Bridge lit up at night & i’d play sports games usually on my little PlayStation 1 with our tiny TV i’d stare at for a little tapping buttons. it was so long ago & i haven’t been back to SF in a minute. they shot a scene in Hulk on that street & filmed some portion of the X Games in the 90s on our street. Jen (my baby sitter) & i walked up to the top of the street, with its steep hill (the same hill i learned to ride a bike on full speed without training wheels) & these skaters were all skating around & some guy on blades was trying to jump through the driver’s side of a car with the door open & make it out to & land on the other side of the car onto the street through the passenger door side. i don’t know if he ever was successful with that little stunt, nearly an impossible trick.
through everything throughout the years, with every meaningful & treasured moment to all the hardships, grief, struggles & sorrows (feeling numb, in love or heartbroken, in your bag, feeling yourself or jus out of it & despondent, etc.), the one who sticks around throughout all of it — right by your side, even when you lose someone or friendships falter or the fam isn’t really chatting a whole bunch at the moment — is music. After a long day at work or a grueling sesh at the gym or another day spent wishing you could strike up a cute little conversation with the girl you secretly have a crush on but barely knows you exist or during a night out with friends back at some apartment sipping wine & beer & 40s getting high… the one thing you could always count on to perfectly accommodate all kinds of occasions is music. trust me, there’s an artist out there for every kind of occasion. All music — every genre & every artist — is beautiful… it’s not whether this song is trash or that one is pure gold, it’s all relative & there’s a time & place for all sounds, poetic in nature with intervals of silence perfectly timed with synths, riffs, keys, melodies & beats.
the reason i alluded to drugs & mental illness earlier, two things i’m susceptible to, is that music (along with a runner’s high i’d get running three miles a day in high school) was the first drug i was ever introduced to… albeit a sober one that could still get you high. over the years, i dove deep into music. it all pretty much really took off on those trips with my babysitter Jen to school, the mall, skate shops, etc. listening to her CDs & the radio. she was like 23 or so at the time & so was her bf (i have no clue how old they were, either still college age or a little older… i mean, we’d always drop her boyfriend off at the local college, some cool campus in the city, him with his dope vintage car with the wide dash — so old idk if it even had seatbelts — and Jen in her cute 90s girl car). but i loved her as if she was my 2nd mom & she gave me my first little taste of how dope music was. she was so fucking cute & the music — even in the early days of my youth — was intoxicating. i felt high & sounds from the speakers connected right back to the moment & spoke to me in ways. from then on, i almost always invariably related to the world through the tunes in my headphones. it was my way of communicating with others w/o needing to muddle it in actual words. i was always better at expressing my feelings through the music i put on aux then with my stupid mouth, always mumbling & sometimes straight babbling. i used to go on & on in my stupid way. and then i’d feel stupid for even talking in the first place & write a paper i had to turn in & drown myself in music from an artist i was into. now i don’t ramble on like i used to. i jus smoke a cigarette & try to listen more, to girls, to my fam, to the universe.
i still remember the day i had to skip school in first grade. usually, i’d feel lucky, a day off from the grind. but i was kinda sad this time because, when we made our way out to street & were headed to Jen’s car, her back window had a cracked hole in it with shards of glass & a shattered Heineken or some beer (comes back in my memories as a Heineken) on the ground. she opened her front door & checked the car. she had nothing really in there except her CDs & her whole collection was stolen… so extremely valuable at the time & even so to this day. i knew how much the CDs meant to her & i felt bad she had to take her car to the shop to get it fixed, something she’d have to pay for even though she was still jus trying to afford her lifestyle, education & to take care of my sis & me on the daily & jus get by. she was the best babysitter i ever had & even though some may say, “oh it’s jus a few CDs & a broken window, she could get it back”, i knew even at the age of 5 or 6 how important music is, especially to some of us, who practically need it to breathe…
i still remember one of our first vacations as a fam (my sis, mom, stepdad, step bros & myself). Jen tagged along too. we all took a trip to Hawaii. my stepdad burned a mix of songs off the computer onto a CD for us, something that couldn’t even be done a few years earlier. i remember that CD like it was yesterday & my Walkman & the airplane ride.
in the early 2000s, we were bumping Hey Ya, as well as Roses, by OutKast & some Ride Wit Me by Nelly, Fireman by Lil Wayne, Burn & Confessions Pt. 2 by Usher, She Will Be Loved by Maroon 5, Float On by Modest Mouse, The Reason by Hoobastank, All Star by Smash Mouth & Swing, Swing by The All American Rejects, All Falls Down by Kanye, Good Riddance & When September Ends by Green Day, Perfect by Simple Plan, All The Small Things by Blink 182, etc. MTV was in its prime & Apple just came out with iPods & iTunes where you could buy a song for about .69 cents.
idk there’s so much access to music nowadays, but the tunes almost hit harder back then when MTV would keep their set of 30 or so music vids repeating for a week or two. i was also only about 8 years old so everything was new & cool to me.
nowadays music is my lifeline. back then it was my lifeline. all my life it’s been the focal point.
in high school, i’d workout a lot between basketball & volleyball & the court & gym at home & infinity pool & study for AP classes basically until dawn, always with my headphones plugged into my iPod shuffle. the music helped offset the sleep deprivation. late at night when i was about 16, 17, 18, i had fallen already for a few girls. i’d be studying late with my mind drifting back off to the girls & i’d take a break from reading some thick, arduous text book & go on YouTube (Spotify didn’t really exist until i went to college… we still had SoundCloud in the early days, though). Via YouTube circa 2010 & 2011, i discovered one of my first longtime favorites, Angus & Julia Stone.
…to be continued.
ps: got to start working on a playlist for a road trip to see my sis down in the OC with my mom.
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