I couldn’t live without music.  Each major event in my life has its own soundtrack; places in my heart and my memory can be instantly unlocked using the key of a particular song.

Part of my nature seems to be a need to find connection – with people, music, literature – and as such I tend to listen to music that reflects how I am feeling.  During periods of melancholia I am likely to drown myself in the aching sadness of Damien Rice’s ‘Delicate’ rather than manipulate my mood with Pulp’s ‘Disco 2000’.

To some this may seem, well, depressing.  A sure way to make yourself feel worse, not better.  But one of the things that I have learned in getting through the darkest of days is that it is necessary to acknowledge how you feel, to accept it and find ways to hold on through the turbulence, rather than resist, struggle against or deny what ultimately cannot be ran away from…

This post was written for The Huffington Post, to read the full article please follow the link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-williams2/music-as-medication-for-t_b_9406416.html

Soundtrack:
Artifact #1 – Conor Oberst