I Like Being Frightened...

I've been battling a bit of an addiction.

Happily, it's to a very manageable and affordable substance. I'm a hopeless junkie to a one-time download that grips me like a bad crystal meth habit. Minus the need for any dental work.

And the really cool thing about this is that it supports my very firm belief that every life needs a really good soundtrack.

I should first thank Rob for this bittersweet introduction to the elixir known as Frightened Rabbit. Specifically their album "The Midnight Organ Fight". (I would also like to thank him for writing very beautiful and severely warm e-mails to me during the first part of my separation and divorce. I am indebted to him. But that is a tale for another day...)

Who knew upon zipping a quick $9.99 to iTunes that I would become completely and instantly addicted? So madly in love with this as though I conceived and gave labored birth to it myself? Earlier this year I struggled with a mild habit to Connor Oberst and his solo album. However, I kicked that in a few short months. No twelve steps needed. But this? I still cannot go a single day without injecting this into my ears. Turning up the volume and hitting repeat until I feel the oddly necessary ache or the sincere relief that each perfectly symmetrical word brings.

Much like Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of The Moon syncs up perfectly with The Wizard of Oz, The Midnight Organ Fight syncs up perfectly with the past two years of my own life. It sweetly, boldly tells the tale. I listen and fragments of my damaged life (more black and blue than black and white) present themselves boldly etched in my mind like Edward Gorey is working feverishly away in my noggin. I listen as I lose bits of myself and bits of my children like a leper loses limbs...while I need good arms to fit perfectly or twist around my waist to bring heat around my cold, aching body. I hold my breath while I struggle to swim through deep, drunken, panic-stricken waves. I am on the brink of sincere sorrow, needing to speak of things that can kill, or possibly salvage, an important relationship.

Every raw and intimate detail. Every honest want and thought I've had over the past couple of years is addressed so clearly in this recording as though I had dictated my life out loud to these Hutchison boys (and they had seen fit to listen and create their brilliant musical interpretation). It is truly, selfishly, my personal soundtrack. It's become my musical habit of choice.

And much like the enlightening ending of The Wizard of Oz (the ending I have always been so madly in love with), Scott Hutchison's gorgeous songwriting reminds me every day that I have the heart, the brain, and the courage I had once sadly forgotten I had possessed all along.

No wonder I remain a hopeless mainliner.