[cylon]

This is my first post, so I'd like to say "hey everyone!"

I registered so I could post in this particular thread. This topic has been in my mind because I write music as well. This topic has kept me up at night in the past.

How can I have a happy life if I love sad music? If I write sad music does that mean I will be sad? Doesn't music have to be sad to be "meaningful"? Isn't life boring when everything is happy?

My tastes are similar to some of the posts I've read in here. At a very young age I was introduced to Depeche Mode, and that basically changed my life and got me addicted to music. I love all types of music, but the music that has alwasy resonated with me, is stuff like Depeche Mode, the Cure, The Smiths/Morrissey, Cocteau Twins, the "gloom and doom" stuff.

The last couple of years, I still love that stuff, but seem to be more interested in uplifting dance music. I just seem to be gravitating towards that. Recently I had a relationship go bad, and I listened to Morrissey constantly, exclusively, every sigle day, all day long. I guess for this period of my life I was a "vibrational match" for the type of emotion and perspective in his songs "another lonely man who knows what it's like... let's mope" As I feel better about the end of that relationship, and more hopeful for my future, I'm not listening to Morrissey so much anymore, or Depeche Mode, or the Cure, even though I still love that music, and buy all the songs/albums/b-sides. I'm still a full-time fan but my "energy" seems to be with more uplifting stuff.

It's like letting an old friend go, because you grow apart naturally. Like the person who mentioned the way the Goth kids talk to each other, and how the negativity and loneliness are the way they identify themselves. I'm 30 now, not into that scene anymore, but I was very much like that my entire adolescence, and up until just a couple years ago. If you get what you focus on, and music is the main way you experience the world, you will probably get the negative stuff you are imagining. I have really wrestled with this. The music I write tends to be a litte depressing sounding, but it also transcends that into something hopeful. It sounds like my influences that I have mentioned, even though I am feeling better about my life.

I don't know how much my lyrics are going to change, now that I am actively choosing to feel good about life. I will always have a place in my soul for that music, because it's beautiful. And you do have to have contrast. You can't know happy without knowing sad. But it seems the more happy you are, the more choices you naturally make that reflect that. Like for me, going from listening to the "gloom and doom" music to more upbeat dance music.

I think a big answer to this is "don't take it so seriously". But when music is so important it's hard to not take it so seriously.

A long post, I'm just really happy to find a thread that's exactly what I've been thinking about. See you around!