I feel like, once you hit a certain age, you kind of just get obsessed with the past.

Like, don’t get me wrong: I love where I am. I’m excited about the future and I try to stay rooted in the present and blah blah blah, but I don’t think you can help looking back once you’ve gotten a bit further on down the road. It’s natural. And, in my case, it doesn’t help that I’m naturally just an anxious-as-fuck human being, so I’m kind of always having existential crises as it is.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about music. Specifically, making it. I used to do that all the time, and it was my ultimate dream to do it for a living. I lost two bands due to hubris and a tendency to shit where I eat, but that’s a different story for another time. In this case, I’m talking about the memory of the music-making itself.

I don’t know how to explain the way that singing and songwriting made me feel, beside that it made me NEED. I’d wake up and need it. I’d need it after band practice was over. Hell, I’d hit a note, or we’d all fall in line at the same time, and I’d need it while I was doing it. I have never done hard drugs, but I feel like I’ve experienced a little bit of what the addicition feels like. Heart racing, muscle aching, destructive love for something that you literally can’t stop thinking about? Sounds familiar to me.

Now, I go to bed at 8:40 PM exactly. I hate parties and large gatherings. The idea of riding a bus and living out of my suitcase in multiple cities sounds like hell. But there was a time where I wanted nothing more than to roll through the beat, to belt, to scream in front of as many huge crowds as possible.

And if you’re like “Arianna, it sounds more like you wanted to be rich and famous,” you’re not listening. Fuck fame. Fuck money (though I do like having it). It was about connecting with others who knew the adrenaline rush, who couldn’t stop moving or singing the moment the sound hit them. It was about being amongst people who, regardless of religion, felt closer to their gods when there was melody and prayed using bass. I NEEDED that.

I don’t really anymore. Not fully. But goddamn do I miss it, sometimes to the point where it hurts and saddens. I don’t even necessarily miss my old bands; I just miss performing.

There was nothing like it. First, someone would play a group of notes together that hit the right nerve.

Then I’d hear a melody. It would start in the back of my head, then spread diffusively throughout my entire body. And then the words would come.

The others would join in as they felt where we were headed. And then, from nothing, something was born. No, not “born” — that word suggests that what came forth was blank and moldable, like babies are. Something was revealed, as if it had been floating around us, unseen all this time, merely waiting for someone to acknowledge it.

It’s the closest to tangible magic that I’ve ever experienced, the closest I’ve ever felt to true power.

And today, I miss it.

Someday, maybe I’ll do something about it. But for now, I’m whining about it because that’s easier.

Anyone else feel me here? Let me know.

And if not…I dunno. Lie. It is the internet, after all.