This Is Us
I Am So Out of Tune
A complicated love letter to music
This is a love letter. It’s also a story about depression and autism and music, but it’s still a love letter. Remember that as you are reading this. And if you know me or care about me a little, please know that I’m okay.
I am.
I’m not great, but I’m okay.
I’m never going to be great, and that’s also okay.
I don’t like binaries, but I’m guessing either you know what I mean when I say that music has saved my life, or you don’t. Not everyone has this kind of relationship to music. I guess other forms of art and media could substitute. A couple of TV shows have kept me alive. And the Food Network, probably.
I’ve written about this before on my blog. How music can make me feel less alone. How sometimes I feel like I’m actually a human being when song lyrics resonate with me. How I have Wilco lyrics tattooed on my body because those words once stopped me from jumping in front of a train.
But sometimes I can’t listen to music at all. Actually, most of the time, I can’t stand to listen to music. If you ever recommend music to me, it might be literal years before I ever listen to it. I’m sorry. I don’t know why this is. We could sit here and speculate about my…
