Music can save you without you knowing it

Music saves lives.

Sounds like a bumper sticker. It’s true, though it sounds pretty dramatic.

But it certainly helped me this week, when I had a serious conflict with my greatest enemy.

As Elton John’s “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” rattles around my head, let’s talk about my bad day, which happens way too much recently. Too much adult stress just freezes me sometimes. It’s difficult to focus on work, which just creates more stress, which just freezes me more, and so on.

I had band practice that night and was tempted to call in sick and get in my car and drive until I ran out of gas. I didn’t care. Which is a dangerous brain state for addicts.

I briefly considered purchasing a couple drinks (my drinks are bigger than yours) to take off the edge, but I knew it would make the next day worse.

I’d sleep badly and wake up feeling like someone blowtorched my brain. Which badly hinders work and would put me even more behind on this life I keep theoretically promising me I’ll live.

Sometimes you just have to stop thinking, shut up, and do something.

So I went and played drums for a few hours, like I said I would.

I don’t know if it’s feeling like you did something, seeing your friends, making the music a little better every time we play, or the effect of the music itself. I suspect a bit of all of it. Though I’m pretty sure just making the music is the biggest factor.

I felt great afterward. And the next day.

Me defeated me again. Add up enough days like that and I may be danger of having a good life.

I always feel better. And I know it. So why would I even hesitate? Why would I even consider adding alcohol to the mix?

Because humans think too much - and I spent years paving over the mental cracks with alcohol.

Music is miraculous for thousands of reasons and it drives me crazy it’s not as mandatory as anything in school.

Music teaches. It heals. It focuses people. It triggers the most beautiful memories and the most painful times.

It brings people together like nothing else. People- especially the young - use music to figure out who they are and who their people should be. Music defines many of us.

Music is important enough that some people let it nearly starve them trying to make a living from it. Music makes us better at math, at writing, at remembering.

It certainly teaches people how to work and how to commit, especially when the odds are against you. It teaches you to fight fear.

Music is, to some of us, the ultimate form of expression. We often can’t say how we feel, but there’s always a piece of music waiting to help.

It can correctly be called magic, because it’s often unexplainable. Love’s like that.

Lloyd Dobler didn’t sit on Diane Court’s driveway and paint a picture, recite Shakespeare, sculpt a statue, or act out a scene from a movie. He held a boombox over his head and let a song tell her everything.

Music was the reason I moved away, made my best friends, had a career (part of it), and learned how to work with other people, which is a hugely underrated aspect.

Parents push kids into sports, frequently saying it teaches them the same thing. Which it does. But no more than playing in a band.

There aren’t coaches telling you what to do when you’re in a band. You have mentors who’ve done it before and teachers. But ultimately it’s the players who have to figure it out among themselves. The have to figure out the power structure and their place, then figure out the communication part. The pieces have to learn how the sum is greater than the parts. You have to learn how to learn as fast as the rest of the band.

And even though it’s not the biggest part of my life or career anymore, it still adds more than I usually know. It did this week. If you haven’t, try it. It’s never too late to feel it.

My daughters have a dad to feed, so please consider paying $8 a month to read these columns. Find more nonsense in Tony’s book “Lying Drunk,” available from Barnes & Noble at https://bit.ly/46xoaJJ or Amazon at https://a.co/d/cYNCUPp).