I don’t remember exactly when it started. Maybe it was always there, lurking underneath everything — a need, a craving, an itch that only music could scratch. What I do know is this: I can’t function without it. Not for long. I woke up this morning, and immediately opened Spotify, and it was asking for my password, which of course I couldn’t remember. I panicked! It prompted me to write this and try to explain what I was feeling. Silence doesn’t calm me; it unnerves me. Without music, the world feels unfinished, like someone forgot to color it in.

Jazz is my current real addiction. The good stuff. Not the polite dinner music people think of when they hear the word jazz, but the wild, beautiful chaos — Coltrane’s wailing sax ripping holes in the sky, Miles Davis and Bill Evans making the impossible sound effortless, Monk banging on the piano like he was building a whole new language. There’s something about jazz that feels like the sound of thinking itself. It’s alive, unpredictable, messy in the best way — just like life.

But it’s not just jazz. Progressive rock pulled me under too — bands like King Crimson, Yes, Genesis back when they still had teeth. That complicated, layered sound, where time signatures flip and melodies twist in on themselves — it doesn’t just entertain me. It ignites my brain. I think that’s what hooks me so hard: the complexity. Jazz and prog make my mind work in overdrive. Listening to them is like solving a beautiful, endless puzzle where every solution just leads to a better question.

I need that. I crave it. The more intricate, the more alive I feel.

My days are scored like a movie soundtrack — from the moment I wake up, solving Wordle and Connections and drinking coffee to a heady mix of horn riffs and polyrhythms, to driving around in Atlanta where a ten-minute prog epic carries me through traffic like a private voyage. Even during sales calls or small talk, a part of me is itching to plug back in, to disappear into some labyrinth of sound where everything makes a little more sense.

Most people don’t get it. They think music is a hobby, a mood enhancer, something nice to have in the background. I get annoyed when people talk or have their phones out during a concert. I don’t relate to how people listen to music now days. I want to hold the music in my hands. I want to get off my butt and flip the record. I want to crank it when others want to have a conversation. For me, it’s survival. Without it, my thoughts feel brittle, my emotions get tangled. Give me a walking bass line, a manic drum solo, a guitar playing three melodies at once — and suddenly everything inside me lines up, clicks into gear.

I used to wonder if needing it like this made me weak, like it was some kind of crutch. But over time, I realized it’s the opposite. Music doesn’t numb me — it wakes me up. It sharpens every edge, deepens every shadow, brightens every color.

Yeah, I’m addicted. Unapologetically.
And honestly? I wouldn’t want it any other way.