back in high school, i spent a lot of late nights on YouTube listening to music while i studied after i got back from school & had finished basketball or volleyball practice & my post practice workout. i’d either listen to music on YouTube or SoundCloud or music downloaded off iTunes on my iPod Shuffle. times were so different from like 2004 – 2012. at the time in high school, i could only really listen to what my parents were listening to & for the most part i liked a lot of the songs we listened to continuously in our Apple Library. there wasn’t as many venues for discovering artists. I mean, there was the radio & our car had a 6-disc-CD-changer so every now & then i’d walk into Barnes & Noble, not for a book, but to check out their CD collection. the first few CDs i got junior year of high school were All The Stars and Boulevards by Augustana, Inside In/Inside Out by The Kooks, A Collection by Third Eye Blind, Vampire Weekend by Vampire Weekend, Sigh No More by Mumford & Sons, and lastly Man on the Moon by Kid Cudi.
but i still didn’t really know anything about music, i jus knew i liked it. i was a young kid who hadn’t really been introduced to anything underground or much indie or hip hop or emo & grunge. i knew of it, but i was so busy with sports & school, that i hadn’t really ventured into much of the universe of music, especially being more inaccessible at the time with Spotify not yet a major platform.
my step bros, sis & i grew up in a time with Blink 182’s “I Miss You” & Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated” playing on the radio, thoughts on girls & dreams of making it in the world. in the little beach town we were in, i was kind of drawn to skate culture — well in addition to sports… but the idea of sports as a hobby fell off a little more when i went to college. i got mostly As with lots of AP classes in high school & by the time i made it to college, i desperately had to let off steam. my version of sowing my wild oats was drowning myself in booze nightly at the different parties popping off & experimenting with weed. after a breakup & some significant events, i dropped out of school for a year to focus on myself. i kept playing a little guitar, surfed & skated & listened to music religiously. i enrolled in a sleep psychology course at UCSD which was incredibly interesting & got a little time away from everything back in my actual college residency at UC Davis. San Diego was nice for a while. i surfed a lot. met some people in some out patient therapy group. this girl i was with took me to buy my first glass pipe. started smoking more weed. she went her way. i went mine. as a 20 year old kid, i was still naive to drugs, girls, music, etc. i didn’t really know anything, let alone even know myself. because i was naive, in early December of 2014, i went up north to visit a friend & picked up some weed that was — unbeknownst to me — laced with angel dust. somehow, i made the drive safe back to San Diego, but was high as all hell all through the night & on my way to visit the girl i knew who took me to get the glass pipe, i crashed my car, got picked up & locked up a few days, then not too long after taken to the hospital as i had split my head open & then whisked off to some psych ward. it was a hard time. at the end of a month spent there, through Christmas while my family was up north, i got some pills for my head & anxiety & was back at our little spot in South Park, San Diego.
i worked out daily at the fire house gym to get rid of my gut & gain my strength back. everyone talks about a freshman 15, but there’s also like a post mental hospital 20. i sweat it all off within a few months & was back to my normal weight & self. i was skating, watching Outlander after having read it in my free time & made my way back to Davis for the fall quarter. it’s funny the way life from birth in 1994 to the 2014 car crash incident & one-and-only time getting laced drugs & all that happened felt like the end of who i was in my youth: like a direct split & rebirth into who I would become. my life changed for the better… depression from certain types of neglect, abuse, eating disorders, over exertion, sleep deprivation, etc. wore off & i started living life to the fullest, not taking anything in my life for granted, lucky to have made it out the other side. God showed how bad it could get, but also revealed blessings on the other side of it.
i started candy flipping (molly & acid) & smoking cigarettes in 2015. i was listening to Team Sesh (Bones, Drew the Architect, Cat Soup, etc.), The Story So Far, Kendrick Lamar, Goth Boi Clique (Lil Peep, Cold Hart, Horse Head, etc.), $uicideboy$ & so many other new artists. i was starting to find a lot of gems in the wave of the SoundCloud era.
Music has meant a lot to me all my life. i read more now than i used to & realize i have to maintain more of a balance with my own music & writings, genres & artists & books & shows. i can’t jus flat out binge one thing or another or i’ll get stuck in time & place & can’t alleviate my mood.
i still remember grinding with two different girls two different nights, one to Tennis Court by Flume & the other to Me & You by Cassie. i was rolling when Chance the Rapper invited Donnie Trumpet on stage & played Sunday Candy to the crowd at The Bridge District Festival in Sacramento & my gf & i snuck off to the bathroom stalls at the TroyBoi concert. then there was the Subtronics concert & ecstasy all over the place. i caught the set list at the Lumineers concert way back in the day, saw Tyler the Creator, Death Grips, the Growlers, Porter Robinson & Madeon all perform at the same festival, among many others. Louis the Child & Steve Aoki were cool too & i should have made it to the Cashmere Cat concert, but my girlfriend was feeling kind of sick that night so we stayed in. she & i went to see Phoebe Bridgers at Ace of Spades, too. all of these concerts had a way of impacting me for months after & seeping into the very fabric of my being & existence, like most people who regularly attend shows & love the idea of seeing their all time favorite artists live. there’s still so many artists i want to see perform, like Zach Bryan, Morgan Wallen, Mac DeMarco, Cigarettes After Sex, Pouya, & $uicideboy$, etc.
who knows, maybe one day i will. all i know is i spend about 3 hours each day reading & writing, about 2 hours watching TV & the other 11 i’m awake i spend listening to music, whether while i’m at the gym, headed to the corner store, or sipping & smoking catching up with Substack & socials in my living room. music will always have a key to my heart, and almost my soul too, unlocking a portal of escape out of this world, offering ways to vent & cope with all the things life throws my way, a sort of relief from the lull of static reality, stimulating an oftentimes dull world, alleviating the numbness trickling away inside, making sense of the universe as it is around me.
˚☽˚.⋆ 
Leave a comment