When Down, Try Rock

There’s a harrowing and tedious part in our day that I think we all secretly dread more than, say, a hard class, a job interview, or a last-minute keynote. When you’re days or weeks away from these things, you have time to plan, lists to accomplish, and plan B to back you up. You know what to do before and during the event, and maybe after it, but eventually, when you’re halfway through your not-having-to-do-anything period, it’s harder to plan your next move, and you become anxious. That being said, our anxiety festers less in anticipation and fear of a colossal event, because what makes it worse is not doing anything, and that includes not doing anything for a long time.

We’re rendered to ask why, but the difference is that anxiety’s effect is stark when you expect something versus nothing at all, and I think the latter is more terrifying. Imagine this: the threshold in your gut minutes before performing on stage to hundreds, if not thousands, of people is normal and expected. Unremarkable, even. You’ve rehearsed in your mom’s garage or the proverbial school auditorium four nights a week; this is negligible. It’s ephemeral, a spur of human nature, but planned nonetheless, even if for a second.

Your mind is on one goal. You got this right before you appear before the audience.

When the thrill of this monumental spike is gone, you lounge with the band, dine with the family, and get wasted with friends. Tomorrow, a quieter day comes when your ears don’t ring with buzzing chords from the dreck of incoherence in the pursuit of perfection. You’re not cut midway through the song as your raw fingers welt from plucking the G string in the seventh take. You wake up and hear birds chirp instead of the hissing cymbal. You’ve longed for days like this when you fester beneath your blankets and eat a whole breakfast for lunch and not soda with poorly microwaved drugstore sandwiches—the problem is, for how long?

You should like having an empty schedule, but you also hate long waits for the next gig. You should like not having to think about your bass guy who gets prudish halfway through the rehearsal, but he also happens to be your best friend. Your worries are empty, and yet your mind is overflowing. Funnily enough, when put in this situation, we often try to expedite having to do our routines when our days are so tedious that our heads become inundated with different kinds of thoughts, including ones we would rather not think about (like self-flagellation.)

For me, I listen to rock. Somehow, there’s this recurring trope in media where hordes of angry, emo, and rebellious teens torment their family by blasting jarring music to compensate for the existential absurdity of it all; but the truth is, ACDC and Kiss are often listened to when you’re drinking your matcha in a cold and quiet Saturday afternoon or lounging lazily with the cat in the chaise—more especially, when you’re anxious. Certainly, music is a powerful muffler for a lot of equally powerful emotions, even more so when rock music, and its other variations, are loud enough to drown the voices in our heads. (Just think of it as a purging, a calm before the storm.)

Perhaps it’s an unconventional and deeply angsty way to go about this quiet anxiety, but I’ve found that the times when I was sprawled in bed staring blankly at the ceiling, motionless and empty, I pick up my playlist and get warped back to reality as soon as my ears get pricked by bands like Basement or Whirr.

It’s no magic or cure for the foreseeable future, once you listen to it in one go, but I’ve found that listening to a jagged and cacophonous tune contests with the equally overstimulating and cluttered minds we have. Of course, for some, people’s idea of alleviating overwhelming emotions is to listen to lo-fi, pop, or play a random tune on their instrument, or simply read a book. Self-regulation and relaxation are different for everyone; your anxiety isn’t the only reason for you suddenly wanting to listen to Arctic Monkeys. But for those of us in need of a mental reprieve after a period of stagnancy, perhaps listening to rock may be worth a try.