Last night, Sam’s entry about music and unity making him happy seemed all too appropriate considering everything that was running through my head at the time. When certain music can bring such joy to your life, it feels like so much more than a volition, it feels like it’s helping pump your blood. And Sam was right: when you see so many other people sharing your enthusiasm, that feeling only grows deeper.

When I first heard the Exploding Hearts last February, I wanted to share them with everyone in the world. I made CD’s and sent mp3’s, hoping everyone else I knew could feel even a shred of what I felt. Their music wasn’t the only music that was exciting me at the time, but it was the stuff I felt deepest in my gut, and, amazingly, that feeling never waned, not for one day. Not until yesterday. My first reflex after hearing about the utterly tragic deaths of members Adam Cox, Jeremy Gage, and Matthew Fitzgerald in an early morning van crash was to put on their lone album, but for the first time ever, it mostly wore me down. Midway through “Throwaway Style” I knew I had to turn it off. Not for one moment could I remember this music as something that made me sad. If nothing else, the Exploding Hearts made, in their brief existence, music to make everyone who loves it happy, together or alone. The prospect of this not happening, if only for a day, was just too much to bear.