And the worms ate into my brain....

Music is a wonderful thing.

It speaks to us.

It calls to us.

It can touch our souls.

I remember growing up listening to groups like The Cure or The Smiths or The Fixx and yes, there was even The The.  I didn't listen to The The, but apparently they are still around.  It just never dawned on me how many bands started with "The" until I started typing.  Anyway, I also listened to The Beach Boys, The Beatles, The Bee Gees.... oh forget it.

Music is there to help us in expressing our emotions and comforting us when we feel no one else understands.  Throughout my adolescence, when I was a hormonal wreck, I mostly listened to either depressing music or angry music.  The Fixx always comforted me with their songs about how any day now we would all die in a nuclear war so why worry about anything else.  The Smiths and The Cure, well, they were just mostly depressing but they helped me to feel better about wearing black on occasion.

If I was feeling more rambunctious I would listen to The Clash or The Motley Crue, The Quiet Riot or.... oh, sorry, "The" is just so easy.  And then I would kick a wall and try to be all mayhem-ish, within limits so that I wouldn't get in trouble with my folks.

Often, on less teen angsty type days, I would listen to Cheap Trick, Van Halen, Led Zepplin and the previously mentioned "The B-" bands.  Yes, even The B-52's but before that Love Shack crap.

There is one particular night that I will never forget where a song, that I had heard before but had never truly listened to, reached me.  It reached me in a way that really made me a ball of nerves.  It scared me, but not because of anything I was doing wrong in my life that the song felt was bad; you know like someone saying "I was coked out of my mind ready to jump off of a ledge and then Freebird came on and I said to myself  'well this really sucks.  I think I'll get off this ledge, clean up my life and go visit Forest.'  damn Freebird!"

This song was not looking into my soul and helping me purge any feelings, or comforting me on any level.  No, this song was in fact looking AT ME.  It was obviously watching me.  If a song could become an entity, or a spirit on some level, this song had become a ghost and was in my room with me.

I had gotten home late one evening after a hard day working as a bag boy.  It really is a tough job, what with having to pick stuff up, put them into bags, make small talk with people who just came in for milk and then remind them as they walk out to their car that they forgot to get milk, and then they get mad at you and end up going back in for the milk but they "accidentally" spill something on aisle 6 and you have to clean it up even though other shoppers trudge through the mess you are trying to clean up, tracking their footprints all throughout the store so you have to just keep cleaning up footprints for the rest of the day, all for minimum wage...  So, to blow off steam we had a little party after work. 

I got home, after partying for a little bit, to a house full of sleepy family, as this was high school, it was late and I was still living at home.  I took a shower and then headed back to my room.  I remember turning on my radio which was a radio-clock-phone combo thingy.  It was simulated wood grain plastic with red digital numbers for the clock and an older dial up radio tuner.  Yes, a classic!

I knew the song on the radio but as I mentioned earlier, I had never really paid attention to it.  The singer droned out "Hey You... out there in the cold getting lonely getting old...."

"Whoa," I thought to myself as I dropped my towel to the ground preparing to put on my pj's.  "I am cold!"  It was winter and I now had nothing on.

"Hey You, standing in the aisles with itchy feet..."

"HOLY CRAP!"  I was mesmerized.  I had been on my feet all day and they were quite itchy.  I dropped and sat on my bed having yet to put anything on.  I stared at my radio-clock-phone waiting for this song to touch my soul.

"This is gonna be good... I won't give in without a fight... I promise!"  I proudly said to myself as I sat there, staring, eagerly awaiting what ever giblet of wisdom came out from my radio next.... but then it got scary... it became freakish....

"Hey you, out there on your own sitting naked.. by.. the.. phone?"

Wait-What?  How does the song know exactly what I'm doing?  I mean seriously, we live in a decent society, people don't just sit alone naked by their phone very often.  This is NOT a common occurrence.  THE SONG IS WATCHING ME!!!!!!

I curled up into a tight little ball wrapping my arms around my knees and tried to lay down but instead I just ended up leaning my right shoulder and the right side of my head against the wall above the headboard of my bed.

"Hey you, with your ear against the wall...."

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"  I screamed in my head. My parents were asleep; even if there was an ax murderer in my room it was still best for me to NOT wake them up.  So, "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH..."

I promptly stood up, turned off the radio-clock-phone, put on clothes, covered the radio-clock-phone with a pillow, walked a few circles in my bedroom trying to figure out what was going on, uncovered the radio-clock-phone and put it under my bed, made sure my blinds were really drawn tight because even though they looked drawn tight, maybe they weren't drawn tight, but they were, unplugged my radio-clock-phone and put it in the trash and then climbed in bed and hid under my covers that, even though I was 17, could still protect me from anything just like they did when I was 7.

Music touched my soul that night and scared the hell out of me.  Granted, there is a slight chance, that something at that party had touched my soul as well.

The next day, I got up and loaded Cat Stevens Greatest Hits into my imitation Walkman cassette player and listened to that and that alone for probably the next week.  Surely Cat would never touch my soul and scare me.

I guessed right.  He did not.  However, to this day I am paranoid that I am being followed by a moon shadow.  A moon shadow.  Moon Shadow.