Music is my life, Part 1
I'm a hardcore music lover.
It's my drug of choice.
Listening to music gives me a contact high.
Luckily it leaves no visible marks, and has really quite manageable side effects.
Like any self-respecting junkie, for example, I might, now and then, engage in a little criminal behaviour to support my habit.
And I spend a hell of a lot of time and energy looking for my next hit.
I’ve always been this way. I've been an addict since I was a kid.
I remember putting on a pair of Dad's headphones, (they were silver, with huge, cushy ear pieces), and reaching up to turn on the amplifier. I would open the lid of the record player and take the needle and place it as carefully as I could on the vinyl.
Listening to the scratch and hiss of the record as it began to turn, I could feel my whole body begin to tingle with excitement. As the first few bars of music played, I'd be completely submerged by a rush of pure adrenaline, and a barely containable, ecstatic joy.
Eyes closed, prostrate on the floor, I was enveloped. Intoxicated.
As I sunk deeper into the music, I would shift the focus of my attention to different parts of the sound -- now on the drums, now on the voice of the singer, now on the way the guitars changed pitch and rhythm -- and every time I listened it was a new and wondrous experience.
It was around this time I developed my first full-blown crush -- nay, dear I say it, love. For a musician.
Cat Stevens.
We had a copy of his Teaser and the Firecat LP.
God, I loved that album.
And I could stare at his picture on the inside sleeve for hours. I was utterly hypnotized.
I mean, look at him:
Such gorgeous, gentle eyes. Such flowing locks. Such full lips.
Quite feminine, really.
Was this presaging something, perhaps? (I have a thing for brunettes to this day.)
