There was a time—around the ages of 14 to, oh, I don’t know, late 20s when I was so moved by music it often hurt. In a good way. All the feelings pinging inside of me, locating themselves inside my ribcage (heart, perchance?), groin (libido anyone?), stomach (gut punch), and round and round again. My mind, or rather intellect, rarely got involved. Pure emotion, very hard to paint with words. I wasn’t someone who was a deep music nerd, knowing all the words to, and therefore the meaning behind, Todd Rundgren’s unreleased B-sides, or pinpointing the dropped stick on the live version of some Guided by Voices C-single. At no time in my life had I gone deep on Carole King’s or Joni Mitchell’s lyrics. I’d been a girl who’d lain prone on the floor of my bedroom with my headphones on, eyes closed, scaling Zeppelin’s Misty Mountain and quenching Van Halen’s Eruption. It was how the music felt inside me rather than how the words affected me.

I did, and still do, have an insatiable love for words and stories. When it came to music, I devoured every publication from Creem to Hit Parader to Thrasher and The Face attempting to witness the lives of all the bands who made the music that moved me. Of course, it made sense then that I would become a music journalist so I could get close to bands that would make my heart beat. I wanted to find a way to translate the pure joy of music’s power into some kind of language people would understand. And I was sure that merely being in the presence of musicians would show me how. I didn’t want to take apart their motives or challenge their stances in life, I merely wanted some of their magic to rub off on me and not be afraid to swoon.

Yet once I got inside the belly of that beast, I discovered a world where feelings were not really the thing. Guys—and those were 95% of my music compatriots—didn’t function on how the music made you feel, unless it was in a mosh pit and perhaps you were flailing fists and feet, or some very impressive piece of pyro had just gone off alongside a wicked guitar or drum solo and you said “Fuck yeah” and sure, those are emotions, but I wanted to talk about how the singer seduced you with the mic stand or the whiff of erotic bonding between bass and guitar player. I would try that line of conversation, then watch my fellow journos walk away toward the bar while lighting a cigarette. Maybe I was just talking to the wrong people. I slowly came around to understanding how to balance my emotions: Outward facing cool while saving red-hot passion for the privacy of my own space. I would not announce in story meetings how a band made me feel because there would follow a round of sexist-tinged razzing, no matter the gender of the band, that would silence me. So when I proposed a story about Soundgarden it was all vocal-cord-prowess this and Beatle-esque/Metallica-like chord- structures that. I became a quick learner, a master subjugator. I managed to keep the secret about the very messy way music made me feel tucked pretty deep inside.

SPIN dayz were the moment I stopped exposing my raw primal emotions and shrugged on the leather layer of icy disinterest. It happened pretty quickly. I wrote stories on bands I loved and used cool-kids language that got me just close enough without exposing the raw, bloody, beating, libidinous heart inside me when I was around them. When I was standing side-stage at a show and felt the familiar ache, I’d notice it, then look into the audience to find the front rows feeling that too. Entranced by Kurt’s sideways smile as he dropped to his knees, by the glint in Eddie’s eyes as he looked for a light truss to jungle-gym himself on, by the sweat on Gavin’s chest as he leaned into the microphone to moan, by the slip of Courtney’s strap as she pulled up from a well of complications, by a glimpse of the turmoil on Chris’s face covered by a wall of hair. And the audience, those were my people in the front rows, responding. I’d been them. I’d have climbed down there with them except my job was up on the stage with all my fellow journalists covering the show. Or at least that’s what I thought. Somewhere along the line, I’d equated too much emotion with embarrassment and honestly, it felt easier to store it all away. Emotion had gotten me in trouble. The less I fell to the floor with feelings, the fewer skinned emotions I’d have. Plus, I told myself I’d only be storing them temporarily.

Funny the things we tell ourselves. Amusing how thirty years have passed, a good portion of those solidly stepped-away from music. Some people in my life have asked after that with a certain amount of worry (I’m looking at you Dennis and Julian). I couldn’t really explain it. I didn’t ever want to be the person who only liked the music that had been made during my formative years. Someone who said, “They just don’t make music like they did back when I (blah, blah, blah).” So I tied it off and decided not to explore. Sort of like a petulant child who outgrows a toy, then decides all toys are stupid. Oh, yeah, and also…I was afraid to look at what was in the closet where I’d locked up my emotions around music. I mean, what if I started weeping and couldn’t stop? What if the wave of emotions was so tsunami-sized that I drowned? What if, what if, nevermind….

A few weeks ago Dennis texted me a link to a song with the message “Do I dare? They are Italian.” I ignored it. Apparently, I didn’t dare. Wasn’t even curious. Last weekend we were driving home from a club where cover bands pretend they’re Prince or AC/DC or Fleetwood Mac, etc. I guess you could say these are tribute bands(?) even though in most cases, except for Prince (RIP) those folx are still actually making music all on their own. It was a thoroughly depressing outing (we’d gone to see our neighbor play in his band of original funky stuff and he was probably great even though I was too distracted by all the rest to pay much attention). I just couldn’t shake watching the audience of men (mostly men) with hairstyles they’d had since they’d almost been members of Poison and had once auditioned for the Crüe but told people they were too good for that band, which was why they hadn’t gotten the gig. I tried, halfheartedly, to squelch disgust while “What am I doing here?” and “How did this happen?” screamed at 11 inside me. Lots of my ego wrapped up in there. Complete inability to acknowledge that people were just having fun and wasn’t that the point really? Couldn’t get there. Me, snob; you, human.

OK, OK, so with all that stuff itching inside me, we got in the truck to drive home and Dennis put on the band whose link he’d sent me. The one I’d ignored. And as the band’s big huge notes filled the cab, I got very agitated. In a good way. In a way I hadn’t been in decades. In a way that scared me because my heart, my libido, my stomach all got involved. I was maybe afraid they didn’t remember how to function like that anymore. Oh, but they did. I could tell by how Dennis was smiling and watching me that a lot was going on around the general area of my face and more places that he couldn’t see.

Back in the day, when I could barely sort out my own language to explain how I didn’t care if the band was being made fun of in the press for their hair-spray-spandex attitude or overly dramatic guitar riffs, because secretly I liked them, I’d become exhausted by the indie-attitude that would have told me all the reasons the band I liked sucked. Maybe I listened to them (I’m now looking at you, Faster Pussycat) on my headphones in my office and felt like a total weirdo because if anyone outside my door knew, they’d take me down swiftly. And so somewhere along the line, I internalized that shame, then stepped away.

So what the actual was happening now, decades later, as this young band flooded Dennis’s cab and I sat stunned? Rock. Rawk. Traces of Queen, Queens of the Stone Age, Gang of Four, U2, Motley Crüe, even some Right Said Fred. And because I’m nothing if not still a journalist (read: immediately obsessive about knowing all I can about something I’ve become curious/enamored of), I now have in my head a kind of A-Zed collection of information about this Italian band called Måneskin. Some of their songs are so catchy, even when they’re in Italian and I don’t understand the lyrics, that I can’t get them out of my head. I also hear a large chorus of my past yelling “they’re cheesy” “you’re too old” “they’ve been around for ages, where’ve you been?” and to all of that, I attampt to yell I don’t CARE. Shut up.

So, you know, I’m having feelings. I’m understanding to a degree that when I watch this half-hour tour film from their first romp around the Americas, I remember how being in the presence of a band’s camaraderie is intoxicating. I’m trying to stay awake to letting down the drawbridge inside me when I listen and watch. Sure the hoofbeats are slightly jarring, but they’re moving and it feels so good it’s almost frightening.

A final thought: In the short while since my dad died, some sense of stepping toward long-put off creativity is pushing up. It’s not that he stopped the flow in any way while he was here but rather, I think, this resurgence has to do with how a loss can jolt a person into really being present to now: a time to step into things put aside, reel in dreams that floated a bit further off shore. Shortly after my dad exited, Dennis was cast as the lead in Deathtrap, a play being put up by the local Footlighters theater. (Anyone in driving vicinity, come to see it. It’s so entertaining, edge-of-seat, black humor–filled fun. Playing all weekends in October.) And concurretnly, I’m stading in front of my emotional closet, the one that holds music’s magic and holding the door knob, turning it slowly. Stay tuned.