Inspiration

 So tonight I went nostalgic and started listening to bands from my youth with my lovely girlfriend. We went through the misfits, she of-course rolled her eyes as I explained why people may like them. Went through the Dropkick Murphy  she admittedly likes and finally I remembered a band that actually got me into music, Natsumen. Natsumen, admittedly, is not an easy band to get into, they're a jazz fusion rock ensemble that likes to improv through most of their songs. Tonight, while listening to a song I haven't heard from them, I got goosebumps, a reminder of why I love music. Their style just gives me hope, lets me feel when I was a kid, picking up my first guitar. The girlfriend however, didn't see it this way. She predictably called it shit and said she didn't get it. What makes her so hate-able is that she is the type of person that words things correctly for guard sake. For example, she won't put down anything you like outright but use the padded words "in my opinion" or to "to me". Technically she's right, an opinion cannot be wrong but saying "to me, this band sounds like shit" makes me want to drive my meaty fist into her face. This isn't a blog about her, the woe is me talk is dumb, there's a million livejournals with that just in in my opinion I think people, like my girlfriend should be burned then stabbed to death.

Natsumen has again helped me to become inspired, pick up my guitar and write something. It's weird how the band members will never quite know how important they are to me. Music for a while was my only friend, my only family. I remember being young, about 8 and just isolated from society. My father forbade me to go out while he was gone, so it was just me, alone in an apartment for days on end. No one would check on me, no one knew I was there. I just remember rummaging and finding his music collection and figuring out how to connect everything so I could listen. When I played that first cassette I was finally not alone anymore, I wasn't going to lose my mind.