missbr.uk

Music is Half Real

2026-03-08

Without music, life would be a mistake is certainly true and I've been thinking about what it means and why lately, and I am becoming more certain it is true the more I do. Well, before I remember to forget, here's some of those thoughts laid bare, now that I'm a haze of dark rum in the dark of night. There's something about walking down the street at night with music in the headphones, and nobody is around, but there's truth right there laid out before you --- just one step in front of you. Later, there's an old TV up on the shelf playing old cartoons. I remember I watched them when I was little. Or at least I have a vague remembrance of it being there in the background now I see it up on the shelf. It's not something I've consciously thought about, but now that it's there right in front of me, I could never imagine I could ever forget it.

Not that life is terrible, but it is hard¹. But hard is good as long as there is a how to that rock. But in those moments when everything isn't swaying but perfectly still --- it is night, and you are perched before your dinner table. Talk radio is on, and it is slow, painfully slow, but it's not bringing you any closer to sleep. The problem isn't that you're sleepy. It's that there isn't enough life around. There isn't anything beyond, anything which shows you the emotions that could be, the freedom. Yes, yes, that's the problem. In those moments, not when life is terrible, or great, but terribly stale, that's when a hot-blooded summer comes in, half real, and swells far beyond what was ever possible. In a moment that you didn't think was possible.

Music doesn't make things better. It's not a soundtrack to life, it's what makes it possible in the first place. Which is why New Orleans is the center of the earth. They get it.