Bands like The Cure, Tears for Fears, and Roxy Music, and albums like Grace Under Pressure, previously scorned and derided for their simplicity and plasticity, were now met with an open mind and genuine curiosity, leading to a real appreciation of a whole new world of music. I also learned to begin to find some love for a lot of music I actually hated for most of my life, most of it created in the 80’s. I also got to share a lot of it with friends looking for something new. These are huge genres I spend most of my time in, full of so many bands doing so many variations of the basic styles going back 50 years, so part of my great joy was discovering new music and even new bands in arenas I thought I knew so well, especially in subgenres like epic heavy metal and Italian prog rock.
My music-listening experiences in 2020 included new music from beloved bands that had been dormant for years, sometimes decades, mostly in the heavy metal and progressive rock genres. Again, though, the meaningful struggle focuses on what we can control and one of the most helpful responses I could muster was, as always, to listen to music. Of all the stress in 2020, family-related tension weighed the most for me, contributing the most to sleepless nights and angst-ridden days. It also seems like a role custom built for music and the people who love it. It’s an old idea that feels new and different now and has helped to reshape my notion of relationships going forward, especially how my energy is apportioned among them. Meanwhile, I really like the idea that bonds forged through shared experience can be stronger than those gifted by kinship. I read recently that the phrase, “Blood is thicker than water” is a modern misinterpretation of the original, “Blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.” Turns out that’s probably not entirely accurate, but I’ll let the etymologists and other word nerds figure that one out. That will be 2020’s lasting legacy for many. The problem that 2020 shined a fat glaring light on for so many of us is that people we thought we knew turned out to have very different core values, truth be told. In other words, all we can do, even in 2020, is take care of ourselves and do the things that align with our values.
Of course, all the things, good and bad, happened irrespective of any calendar and were, in many cases, actually the culmination of decisions made (or not) in the many, many years preceding, very few of which any one person has any control over at all. Yes, there were so many good things that happened, but don’t even those things feel different? Like they happened despite 2020, against all odds. But maaaan, 2020 feels like a real life son-of-a-bitch, doesn’t it? Even recognizing it’s non-sentience, it’s hard to deny the sense that 2020 has done things. Of course, in terms of human events, a year is an arbitrary construct.
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