Can you quantify how much you love music? Or at least say how you love it? asks Ronan. And lots of people reply and some of it means something to me and some of it doesn’t and a lot of it is utilitarian and some of it talks about transcendence and and and…

And I know I went out walking on Wednesday night with my walkman on, Hex playing, and traversed country lanes and cliff tops and followed streams in the closeness of summer evening warmth, and felt the numb throb of dull pain in my left hand all the while, ligaments sprained and palm bruised deep down by a malicious black circle, but didn’t care about it… And I felt, not happy, because that implies some conscious appreciation of the state, some movement from ‘unhappy’, but I felt something other… It’s vague, I know, and I know it’s bullshit too. But…

What else is there?

Marcello posted a quote from Wayne Coyne on The Church Of Me a few days ago, about art and music, and how, without it (them) we’d be dead by thirty because they’re what brings colour and light and happiness into our lives. And I don’t think that stands for everybody; fuck, look around you, see how many people don’t need it, how many people are moseying along just fine without this thing… And then I think about the Gazza documentary I just watched on C4 about how he’s got ADHD and OCD and this and that and the other and think “fuck it, maybe it just boils down to a need to be loved” but that’s not it either. Not quite. Because what’s love?

We’re just plugging gaps, really. That gap. That hole in you that misses something that wasn’t ever even there, how can you miss something that was never there? Is everybody missing it? No, not everybody is missing it. And those that are missing it don’t all have the same way of getting it back. That moment of transcendence that Ronan gets when someone pieces a great mix together, when someone drops in a beat at the right time, that bit when everyone else is dancing or talking or drinking or stalking a fuck or whatever, only Ronan’s lost for a second, for that split second, for me, on my terms, in my way, which isn’t Ronan’s (I can’t dance, I don’t club, this is all so much solipsism for me), maybe, just maybe, that hole, that gap, that thing you’ve never known but you miss anyway, maybe, for that instant, it’s there, the gap plugged, the absence filled. I might be standing on top of the cliff, Ronan might be dancing, someone else might be on the train or fucking or drinking or crying alone in bed or just sitting cross legged on the floor in front of the stereo listening to something. I’ve got quite militant lately; Emma’s working evenings so I might write (or try and write, fuck it, it’s not like it just arrives when I set aside an hour, not like I’m in control, not like I know what I’m doing or I’m a writer or anything, I’m just somebody who writes) for an hour with some tunes on and then go and try and talk to people on AIM for a bit and then I get an hour or two, and television and films and (often, to my fucking forever shame) books are just totally not even considered, but that hour or two I can go up to the music room and light those three candles (two now; one burnt out and fell into the bottom of the wine bottle it was propped in tonight) and turn on that fucking art-deco lamp with the little bits of film in the oil that swirl and cast a crap glister on the walls, and I can put something on, and yes, maybe it’s artificial, maybe (God bless you Tom Ewing) most people don’t listen to most music like that, or put the walkman on and go walking just to find a quite spot near a stream where they can listen to stuff, maybe most people just hear background noise (Leisure Noise! Go Gay Dad!- Olly always said that was a great title for an album, said it’s what music was for, noise for leisure, like it’s a soundtrack or something [Olly I love yer and I hope to God it wasn’t all about just trying to make the drug experiences better, please no, because doesn’t that reduce something that’s precious, and maybe I’m being pious and a wanker here, it’s not unusual for me, heh, and maybe that’s why I steered clear of ambient/dance/textural music for that year or two because it became about the profundity of songs for me, not about the drug thing, the synaesthesia {you can get it without drugs anyway, we know that} but about the emotional reaction, fuck knows it wasn’t easy for that time, I was an alcoholic near enough, a drunken wreck scaring friend’s younger brothers with misplaced phone calls, and I guess I’m trying to say that music’s worth more than that, isn’t it?- worth something on its own terms, and the whole of the rest of this paragraph outside these bloated parenthesis is about that and I’ve said the point already, fool me) or occasionally a song they have an association with because of an event or something something but that’s really not how I go at it, and the paranoia that I have so often, that I don’t love music as much as I pretend to, that I’m just doing it cos I feel I should, that hits home once in a while and I think “what the fuck is this for? I don’t love anything, I don’t know what love is; how can I love music?” and it’s at those points when I’m thinking about it that I fuck it up (and also when I want to know everything and love it also, and understand, just to prove my passion, to myself as much as everyone else, because I doubt, I doubt a lot [Descartes to thread]), because songs don’t have associations for me, me and Emma don’t have a song, there’s fuck-all music I can’t or don’t listen to because of bad associations, maybe I’m just shallow and emotionless, fuck, it’s a charge I’ve levelled at myself before, sure there’s music I used to love and don’t listen to anymore because I think it’s crap now (people do change minds, and feelings are just- what?- in the mind?), step up Embrace, la la la, I’d say it was about soul, and I did, many many times over and asked what soul was I just stuttered and said “soul” back because that’s an answer, only now I don’t believe we even have one, don’t believe it exists, because if you can’t touch it or qualify or quantify or define it then, you know, it isn’t there, shared emotional responses, what are emotions?- endorphins, maybe, and those other –phins (this is a fucking 600+ word sentence, did you notice?), but there’s bugger-all scientist in me, at least anymore, but there is a little philosopher and the philosopher is a pragmatist as much as anything else says that philosophy’s only use is to help us live our lives better (increase our utility?- no, that’s way too cold, man) and I’ve looked at a few and some of them had things I found useful, but basically, what it comes down toi with music is this- no, let me explain the Buddha thing again; Buddha tells us that life is suffering because we expect substance within and without, and when we realise (only we don’t realise – we encounter the absence without realising, realisation would lead to cessation) that substance does not exist we feel disappointment and that is the root of spiritual pain, and from there we head into Voidist Buddhism (shallow and emotionless- oh, there’s me again, nothing inside), looking for emptiness and flawlessness and tranquillity and it says to me that there is nothing, nothing inside or outside, and this makes a kind of sad sense to me that’s also beautiful and powerful, because once you become nothing you are free to do anything (this is all hokey hippy crap, I know), and yes, we are nothing but a sack of water and minerals and whatnot, there is no thing that carries on when you die, because you die, get it?- cessation, end, just a sack of water and minerals, and I guess what I’m trying to say is, in a roundabout way, that music does two things both of which are wonderful (not all the time, I know, sometimes it’s just there because I like it, but maybe the reason I like it is one of these)- 1; it makes me doubt the void, and 2; it reminds me that I’m alive- not in the heart-beating, lungs filling kind of way, in the “why don’t I just step in front of a train” kind of way, I am here because (no, not because) this exists- no, this exists and I am here and it gives me something, something I am lacking, maybe, in other areas, that a lot but not all people are lacking, and as long as this exists and I am here and it gives me something I am going to get it, because what’s the point of doing this, or being alive, if you’re not going to get something out of it, something more than just distraction, because I don’t think there’s anything else (I’m scared now to finish this sentence but I guess I have to). A 1,140 word sentence. I am a fool. Do I understand it any better? No. Do you? No.

Can I quantify it? Can I say how I love it? I think the above is pretty conclusive. I can’t.