I have made it clear on many occasions that I find it so easy to fall in love with a piece of music, yet feeling anything (romantically) towards a person is damn near impossible. Obviously I have felt something to a couple of people, but my feelings for a piece of music are more constant and maybe more honest. I don’t know. Maybe I will get carried away writing this and you may think, “Olivia, you need help.” I don’t. I need someone to pay me to write. I also need that Velvet Underground boxset I saw in Manchester last year. Oh, and tickets to see The Kills and Zola Jesus. I’d appreciate it if someone took me to see them. Or just gave me a ticket and I’ll go on my own. Be a bit odd if I went with a stranger.

Anyway.

Music is my life. I’m not one for thinking, “Oh I’d love to settle down blah blah blah.” So far from it. I want to write and write until the day I die. I want to go to as many gigs as possible, fall in love with new bands, rekindle my love for old bands. I want to follow a band on tour and write about it. Just like in Almost Famous. I want to make someone feel the way I do about music with my words just like Lester Bangs and John Peel did to me. I want to leave a mark. A positive mark. I want to get people into music that makes them feel something from the depths of their soul, that reaches a place they thought couldn’t be reached. Make the impossible- possible. For me, for anyone. I don’t care who. I’m rambling.

The way I feel when I walk into a record shop is like a child in Toys R Us or someone looking at their partner. Full of love and awe. When I go to a record shop, I have to pick up the records I want. Touch them and study everything about them. I take every single piece of detail in. I do not understand people who download music at all.  Why would you prevent yourself of the greatest musical experience? Buying an LP or CD, going home. Laying on your bed, playing the music and flicking through the album’s artwork. Laying on your bed with the music playing and you just catapult yourself into another world. You escape because reality can be a bore and a pain in the arse can’t it.

Music makes you feel things that every day life can sometimes rob you of. I mean sure, you can listen to a love song and think, “I wish I could fall in love.” Then again, you can listen to a painful, heart-wrenching song and think, “I hope I never ever feel like that.” There is something about music that can make you feel less scared. There is something about people that can terrify you.

I’m 24 fast approaching 25 and I am not afraid to admit that most of the time, I feel like a loner. Yet, when I play certain songs- I don’t feel like that. If I go to a friend and told them a problem I had and they said, “Oh I can relate.” I’m not entirely sure if I would believe them or feel comforted. Yet, say if I felt like shit and played a certain song and could sense that the artist was conveying everything I feel- I would feel comforted, and I wouldn’t feel so alone with what I felt.

Musicians have so much power over the likes of you and I. Maybe they shouldn’t, but they do. The amount of times I keep everything to myself and just play a song to make myself feel better is insane. I feel more secure with hearing a song than using my own words. Maybe I just don’t have the words. I’m pretty good with expressing how I feel to certain people. I mean, there’s only two people I’d do that to- but I can do it. Yet sometimes, all it takes is for a song. A certain line to just hit the nail on the head and for you think,”Yes. That’s it. That is exactly how I feel!” And suddenly, you feel okay.

So, in short, music has the power. The power to do anything and everything to you. It will not let you down. It will not leave your side.

I will end this with a few quotes from my favourite film of all time, Almost Famous. That film changed my life.

“They don’t even know what it is to be a fan. Y’know? To truly love some silly little piece of music, or some band, so much that it hurts.”

“If you ever get lonely, just got to the record store and visit your friends.”