When people ask the hypothetical “what would you want to experience for the first time again?,” they’re usually talking about movies or tv or videogames or something, and I never really have an answer. There are certainly things with twists or reveals that shocked me and didn’t have the same punch on subsequent go-rounds, but for the most part the relationships I create and memories I associate with art build up over time, as I age and grow and experience other new things as a person. That resin, that build-up is sacred and cannot be replaced, and I don’t think I’d scrape it away just to be completely caught unprepared for the “In Water” ending of Silent Hill 2 or whatever.

But, music...is there any album I’d want to hear again for the first time? No, not really, I don’t think. Same reasons. And yet... I think back to when I was 16, 17, 18, 19, back to one of the most severe depressive periods of my life, doing the “angry young man” thing to cope with the alienation and self-loathing that I wouldn’t for many more years realize was the product of gender dysphoria. And I think about what music, all music, was like then.

Up to that point I had listened to a lot of classical and jazz, imparted to me by my parents directly as a young child. And I’d listened to a lot of what could most easily be referred to by the marketing term “classic rock,” imparted to me indirectly by discovering my father’s collection of LPs, intersecting with my discovery of marijuana in high school. I’d listened to a smattering of dance music, imparted almost entirely by videogames like Rez, Jet Set Radio, and of course beatmania IIDX. And, I’d listened to what little passed to me via osmosis through my friends; most of this my antibodies rejected for insecure and bitter reasons (see: gender dysphoria), but some got through. Some of of it quite good, like Gorillaz or....struggling to come up with another example....but much of it disposable dead-ends that I suppose I mostly listened to in order to try to better relate to my friends.

But, as my depression got worse and my peer group and I began mutually disowning each other, things got interesting. I remember going to band practice one day after school with a burned copy of My Bloody Valentine’s “Loveless,” and playing it for my bandmates who, if they had not already begun conspiring to oust me from the group, certainly were now. I remember hearing noise for the first time - The Gerogerigegege’s “Kitanomaru Hyakkei” - and being so captivated, liberated by the concept that you could just...do that. Snot-nosed punk that I was, I remember reveling in my girlfriend’s understandable disgust when I played her things like Gero and bad, early digital era Merzbow records. Yet, I also remember being deeply saddened, hurt, perhaps, when I couldn’t get her to listen past the intro of Boris’s “flood,” or that my playlist of tracks from “Akuma No Uta” and “Pink,,” carefully curated to appeal to her sensibilities, didn’t do anything for her either.

In senior year of high school, I stopped attending classes altogether. I’d already had an involuntary hospitalization due to suicidal ideation. A coup in my circle of friends had essentially made me an untouchable. A visit post-breakup to my girlfriend at college remains one of the most traumatizing things I’ve ever experienced, and probably ought to be brought up in therapy. (Not that I blame her; we were both absolute nightmares, me especially. Teenagers.) I took on several more AP classes than I could have handled under optimal circumstances, and I was failing just about everything. So, I stopped going. As it turned out I already had more than enough credits to graduate, and just had to tidy up some busywork at home (one thing, for example: I was required to have four years of P.E. credits. They had me do worksheets. Incredible). One of the best teachers I ever had took pity on me and supervised my senior project paper after school, on his own time. (Shouts out Mr. Wahl, wherever you are.) Having somehow wormed my way out of having to complete an actual ‘project,’ I merely had to complete a massive research paper with some loose criteria.

I did mine on John Cage.

And so these were the days I didn’t leave my makeshift bedroom in our unfinished basement but to do two things: go to work and check the mail.

My first job was at my local public library, an absolutely wonderful community resource and hangout center the size of a strip mall department store. I started out as a paige there, shelving books, and ONLY shelving books. That part was important. If we were approached by patrons with questions while we were out on the floor, we were to point them to the reference desk, nothing more. Because of this, we were allowed to wear headphones while shelving.

I cannot begin to tell you how many albums pull me back to places in that library. The Jesus and Mary Chain “Psychocandy”? Children’s media. Liars “They Were Wrong, So We Drowned”? Parent resources. Wu-Tang Clan “36 Chambers”? Teen graphic novels and manga. Throbbing Gristle “20 Jazz Funk Greats”? Books on CD. Joy Division “Closer”? The massive nonfiction stacks at the very back of the library, where I was least likely to be seen crying.

It was an ideal job, and even after I applied to work at the circulation desk, I loved the atmosphere, and my coworkers (largely adult women), and the fact that I had a paycheck to cash.

Which brings us to checking the mail! Living with my decidedly middle class (in the way that exists less and less each year) family, I didn’t have any living expenses. I didn’t have a car, either. Or a social life to speak of. And so 100% of the money I made working at the library went into drugs, and music. Of all formats - LPs, CDs, tapes, 7” records, nonstandard noise releases with goofy packaging I got mail at least once a week on average. For a couple of YEARS. Constantly poring over eBay and Discogs listings, contacting European labels and obscure American DIY punk distros trying to hunt down dead stock, on everybody’s mailing list, just constantly consuming and curating a collection I’m proud of to this day.

And when I wasn’t purchasing music, I was stealing it. My SoulSeek client was up 24/7 in search of obscure industrial compilations, 90s Japanese techno 12”s, boatloads of nondescript noise releases, feedback drenched psychedelic rock, the entire back catalog of The Residents. This was the age of music blogs, as well, where curators would put together their own themed collections of esoterica, novelty and sound effects records, 70s synth noodling, extremely specific jazz subgenres, outsider music, all with convenient direct download links sitting out right in public.

I made my own music (“noise”) at this point too, passionately and prolifically. I networked with other artists running ultra-micro DIY labels, many of them also teenagers, ALL of them more competent than me. I made lifelong connections with people through weird music from unexpected places, like the all-but-defunct social platform lastfm, and a certain private forum for rhythm game stuff. My only two remaining friends from highschool (hi Jake; miss you, Richard) would come to my house in the middle of the night to spin the latest stuff we’d been digging, watch concert DVDs, do dope, and commiserate about life, the universe, and everything. And girls. All the things typical of angry young men.

This was my life. Music was new, and there was SO MUCH of it. I felt like new truths about the universe were being revealed to me on an almost daily basis, things that shook me to the core. It was an age of discovery, of learning, of finding new feelings and ways to experience the world and myself, colored by what music was teaching me. Voraciously consuming hours of previously unheard music, every day, for years.

...This is what I miss. This is what I, timidly, wish I could experience for the first time again. Maybe it was that process of discovery. Maybe it was the sense of community, and belonging. The gratification of running to the mailbox, barefoot, in calf deep snow, as to waste not a single second in ripping open some small brown parcel covered in stamps from eastern European countries. Feeling, knowing that some new sound, some new feeling, was around the corner, waiting to be awkwardly stumbled upon.

Maybe it was simply youth, in the unique way that I experienced it. Maybe I’m just nostalgic.

In fact, it is, most likely, both these things, and little more.

But of course I can’t go back. And would I really? I wonder. Those bleak days when I, as “AxemRangers,” tore at myself and the universe in a desperate bid to survive, with music and the discovery thereof as my only solace, that shaped who I am today. It allowed me to be here. When an album transports me back to the library, back to my basement, back a friend’s bedroom, back to non-real spaces, the chat windows and IRC clients in which I and my brethren used to congregate, I can feel a fragment of what it was like when everything was new, everything was exciting, enough that in spite of everything else it kept me ALIVE. It’s warm, and it’s fuzzy, and it’s indistinct. And I miss it. But it’s still there. And now, I’m here.