I’m going to talk about something potentially suicide-related, so watch out.
Music can’t save you.
I keep seeing that all over the place—seriously, all over the place, not just from actual musicians— and I feel like someone needed to say it.
All you’re really claiming when you say “music saved me” is:
Music has a powerful effect.
During a time in my life where I felt like giving up, that powerful effect changed what I was feeling so that I did not give up.
Okay those two things are true, but let’s take a step back for a second.
If you’re lost in the woods and considering giving up, sitting down, and letting yourself starve or be eaten by wild animals, a bird could have the same impact. You might look up, see a colorful shape flying through the trees, and decide to follow it. Now you’re moving. Now you’re doing something, instead of giving up—regardless of whether or not you can keep up with the bird, regardless of where it’s leading you. So sure, that is a good thing. But it’s only temporary, a bandaid solution to your problem. Even if it leads you to water, or shelter, you’re not “saved.”
You’re not “saved” until you’re no longer lost, no longer in the woods. You have to get back to your home. You have to get back to a place where you know where you are in the world, and how to get what you need, and everything makes sense again.
It is the same way with music. Or any art.
Art can remind you of what’s good, and beautiful, and yes, true. But it is not the art that saves you. It is the truth that does the saving. The art just had a hand in reminding you of it. So it would be way more accurate to say “music helped me.” But you still have to deal with whatever it was that got you to the place where you felt like giving up. And part of that is making sure that you know what the song is saying has truth in it, and that truth actually applies to the problem you’re having, because you can lean on truth, and it’s what made the music worth anything in the first place. Otherwise, the music is just a distraction, and distractions end.
In that sense, it’s more like a tiger is stalking you through those woods. You can get away from it briefly, especially if something beautiful or good or true distracts you from the thought of laying down and letting it take you. But eventually you have to kill the tiger, or get out of the woods where it lives.
Truthfully—truthfully—a song can get you out of, or into, a state of mind and emotions. But those emotions have a source. And if you don’t get rid of the source, or neutralize the source, your songs are only going to be bloody bandages on a wound. Worse, the songs might make you start to love the sight of bloody bandages, when what you really need is disinfectant and actual healing.
I do know this from experience. I’m just saying, think about it.
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Yeah you could be a teenager but you could also be the space that’s in between every page, every cord and every screen, the driftwood and the rift, the words you promise you don’t mean
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