My Great Escape

This a personal essay I wrote for my English class about my relationship with music.

“Breaking out of a town called Suburbia I remember everybody always saying: ‘Little brat must be crazy, never make it, in our vicious little world.’ Still I'm leaving”
That’s all I want. All Time Low express it well in their song “The Reckless And The Brave”. I want to be like them and get out of Suburbia and for me music is like the Yellow Brick Road that will lead me to my Emerald City.

"So I'm gonna pack my things and go, travel the world before I'm old. I'll send you photos in the post of all the moments I loved the most." I love getting the bus alone. I know that sounds like I'm a complete loner but I'm not. I just like getting on a bus with my headphones in and my music playing. I like to pretend that I'm running away. The song “The Great Escape” by Mike Dignam really makes me realise how much I crave to travel. Music can help me feel like I'm escaping reality and with all the stresses that come with being a modern day teenager- school, family, friends- it is a welcomed escape. Music, for me, is a portal into another world that is my own and that no one else will ever get to see. Some of my favorite daydreams are about traveling across the world. I have a list as long as my arm of all the places I want to visit- London, L.A , New York and Paris to name a few. By listening to music I can indulged my fantasies of future travels, “Hello Brooklyn, hey L.A. Coast to coast, I'll take you down in flames let the good times roll, we can let go” All Time Low’s “Hello Brooklyn” is a song which is basically just a list of all the cities the band have played and it is s also most of the cities I dream of visiting with my friends and my music.
 
"We're screaming at the moon together and tonight we're gonna live forever." I love that my favorite songs make up the soundtrack to my life, that from one lyric I’m flooded with memories of times listening, singing or dancing to that song. The lyrics from “Diamond Days” by Kids In Glass Houses remind me of sitting in first aid in the SECC arena because I had fainted and been pulled from the crowd, losing my shoes in the progress which lead me to returning home with one shoe in hand. I remember sitting there with a plastic cup of water, because a cup of water is somehow going to solve everything, singing to that song that no one else knew, the weird looks from the two girls next to me were priceless. The lyrics from the song Little Death by You Me At Six, "We are not your lovers, we are not your friends!" remind me of how me and my friend, Caitlin, always sing it as "nacho" instead of "not your" because the singer's diction is so bad during the chorus and it actually sounds like nacho. I can't hear the song “The Time Warp” without instantly thinking of how me and my friends danced the full song, with dramatic pelvic thrusts included, in HMV. Music is what makes my world go round. It connects me to people. If I go to a concert I can automatically have a conversation with a stranger because since we are at the same show I already have something in common with them. Music.

“We’re all architects of our own private hell, no one can hurt us like we hurt ourselves” I love that music is there for me when no one else is. I love this lyric from Young Guns’ song “Bones” because it shows that I am my own worst critic and I don’t have to be insecure because of other people’s words. I love knowing that after I have a fight with my parents my iPod offers me someone else who knows how I’m feeling, “And now I try hard to make it I just want to make you proud I'm never gonna be good enough for you I can't pretend that I'm alright and you can't change me.” “Perfect” by Simple Plan really expresses how strained the relationship between me and my parents can be at times. Expectations have always been a problem for me. Everybody seems to have expectations too high or too low for me.  I can‘t help but try to live up to or beat expectations put on me and if I don’t I feel as if I’m letting someone down, “Could I forget it all? I've lost teeth, failed every test, my broken heart's the only thing of any value I have left” This song “Crystal Clear”, by Young Guns, is a song about realising that life isn’t easy. This line, for me, is very powerful and shows that one day I will forget about the test I once failed in school. Since telling my friends I want to do drama after school they always make jokes about who I’m taking to the Oscars or to movie premiers without realising that it is adding to the pressure I have put upon myself, “There's no other way for me being good just won't be good enough I'll be the best or nothing at all.”  But even if I do fail a test or don’t live up to an expectation I know music will still be there for me because music will never be disappointed in me.

“Cause I’ve been trying way too long to try and be the perfect song when our hearts are heavy burdens we shouldn’t have to bear alone” This lyric from Go Radio’s “Goodnight Moon” really shows me that with  music I will never have a burden too big because music will save me.