Acceptance

Imagine your life without music, without your favourite bands, artists and without the moments in your life when you and a song are at one.

Music turns things that are black and white to colour.

Music is there, often when nothing else is, often when you don’t have anything or anyone to turn to apart from a device to play it on.

Music is life-changing for many of us, figuratively and literally in the case of the people in the profoundly humbling documentary ‘Alive Inside’, which is about patients at various stages of the battle with Alzheimher’s who were given an iPod with their favourite songs on. In a flash, when their music started playing they became alive, their disease-riddled darkened brains were illuminated by the music that meant so much to them – they were alive again, often without trace of the disease. The wonderful ‘Alive Inside’ is currently on Netflix.

A lot of music isn’t made to matter, its for people drinking WKD (Women Kids Dickheads) to pretend they like it on a Saturday night.
The vacuous robots of the SyCo gestapo’s assembly line churning out emotionless manufactured flavour of the week songs that are forgotten about when the ‘next big thing’ is out a week later.

So, that music that matters, music that takes you on a journey, either a nostalgic one or imagining the next one that you will embark on, its really special.

Most of the time you initially don’t know when, or how a song, a line from a song, or a few seconds of music enter you brain until you start humming or singing it, or it starts replaying in your mind after you’ve finished listening.

Sometimes, initially you’re at a loss for words to explain why you like a song, you just know there is something, something deeper.
You then find yourself putting that song on repeat or that album on again and experiencing the connection with a new-found attention and meaning.

The best songs are when you have heard that song 300 times before, but when you listen for the 301st time you experience something new, you hear something a little differently, your attention is drawn to a different lyric, line or verse, often because where you are in your life and who you are as a person has changed, maybe even ever so slightly since the last time you listened.
The most important songs are those that both understand you and you understand, by bands or artists that you feel are singing your life story, hopes, dreams and despairs with such clarity to you.
The most important songs are those that you will never get bored with.
The most important songs are those that you came for the fire, but drowned in the rain.
The most important songs are those that floor you and bring you back to your feet at the same time.
The most important songs will be in your passenger seat, whenever you need them as you’re driving your car down the road of life.
The most important songs are from bands and artists that you can instantly recognise put everything into their music and come along exactly when they should.

In 2005 a who’s who of the giants of the emo/punk scene at the time, released albums where the next one would top the last one and they all could be contenders for 2005’s album of the year:

Copeland – In Motion
Days Away – Mapping an Invisible World
Funeral For A Friend – Hours
Gatsbys American Dream – Volcano
Mae – The Everglow
Minus The Bear – Menos El Oso
Say Anything – …Is A Real Boy
Thrice – Vheissu
Jack’s Mannequin – Everything in Transit
Death Cab For Cutie – Plans
City and Colour – Sometimes
Anberlin – Never Take Friendship Personal
Alkaline Trio – Crimson
Cartel – Chroma
Motion City Soundtrack – Commit This To Memory

and of course Acceptance – Phantoms, have all had an impact on my life through their music, back then and today still.

Acceptance…

…once described as ‘your favourite band’s favourite band’.

You’ve experienced that moment where you put on an album to accompany doing something, such as schoolwork and you hear a line from a song that makes you stop what you’re doing and divert all attention as you start the musical journey in that moment.

Acceptance’s ‘Phantom’s is packed with these moments, it just commands attention from the off.

‘Hopeless, a single word that you would not expect from me’ – from the song ‘Over You’.

You’ve experienced that moment when you hear a line from a song that shatters everything and makes it ok to be afraid, to be who you are and not who you want to be or who you think you should be, Acceptance do that.
You’ve experienced that moment when you hear a line from a song that makes you feel like you’re not alone, that there are others who have experienced the same things that you have and that its alright.
You’ve experienced that moments when you were younger than you are now and a song makes you feel invincible, bolder than your years like happiness is ‘So Contagious’.
You’ve experienced that moment, when you feel older when a song makes you feel vulnerable and younger than your actual years like you are ‘In The Cold’.

Acceptance were in ‘In The Cold’ from 2005 – 2015, when they announced they had reformed and then they later released the heart-hitting ‘Take You Away’.

‘We’ve come a long long way now we’re thinking we’re lost’.

Quite.

I first listened to the song at the beginning of a five-hour van ride in Thailand, and I had it on repeat for the next two hours. Over and over, dissecting every line, instrument, melody and tune in the song.

Later on they announced a new album was coming, and later again, they announced the title ‘Colliding By Design’ – I know, things happen for a reason.

‘Colliding By Design’ has been on repeat since I’ve had it, Acceptance have taken me back to the person I was in 2005, back to the person who I thought I was in 2005 and back to the person I thought I would be in times like right now, back in 2005.
I find myself revisiting the same thoughts and experiencing the same feelings as I did in 2005 but now with an older and wiser perspective, often with the journey unexplainable, you just go with it.

You’ve experienced the escapism that music provides, living in black and white, then the music plays you start dreaming in colour.

You’ve experienced wondering where will you exist, are you more than this right now, have you left it too late to do something and you have experienced being caught up in a struggle between the sea and the sky.

Music is there for you when you are experiencing the highest highs, music is there for you when you are in the lowest lows.

Music will teach you more things than school could hope to, music truly is one of the only teachers of the most important things in existence: life, love, loss, sadness, relationships, dreams, friends and family.

Music is life.

Music takes you to the past, lives with you in the present and projects you into the future.

Music enables us to be content and dissatisfied simultaneously with ourselves at not being where we want to be, because for as long as that song or album is playing, we somehow are already there.

Music is special because you understand it and it understands you.

Music will take the complicated picture you have painted of yourself and deconstruct it into a simple diagram, where its ok to not have all the answers.

Your favourite bands / artists and songs, are your ultimate catharsis, you and them have a connection that comes alive as soon as you’re listening.

We live surrounded by four walls, literally and figuratively, the four figurative walls we have constructed are in our own design – impressive, shiny and have been built to surround and shield us. These walls, we allow everyone to see in their full grandeur.
In the middle of these walls there is a record player – we turn on the record player, the music makes the walls begin to Shiver And Shake until there is nothing left but us, standing, vulnerable in a garden – our Secret Garden, somewhere we have never, and will ever, let anyone in, where music has stripped away the construction until all that’s left is us, really, in our purest self where we are enabled to partake both in our history and the immediate moment, our heartbeat, minds and thoughts synchronised with the music, transcendent and sacred.

Music is where you’ve been, who you were, who you are, who you could be and where you’re going.

This is what the bands, artists and songs we hold dear in our hearts do – they enable us to accept who we are, they are there to challenge us, they become part of us, their songs become and are our story and we become and are their story.

This is what Acceptance do.

This is what music does.

Acceptance is music.

Music is acceptance.

‘Put on my nametag
Stare in the mirror
Give me some answers
Make it clearer now
And then I’m in my head

As the sun is getting older
While the clock is counting over
Am I more than this?
We get caught up between the sea and the sky
Give me that look in, that look in your, eyes
We live in black and white
We dream in colour

Met a stranger near my station
Says you’re alright
Take a vacation
The things to see before I’m dead

As the air is getting colder
While the years are turning over
Where will I exist?

We get caught up between the sea and the sky
Give me that look, that look in, your eye
We live in black and white
We dream in colour

We dream in colour
And we live in black and white

We get caught up between the sea and the sky
We get caught up between the sea and the sky
Give me that look in, that look in, your eye
We live in black and white
We dream in colour

We dream, we dream in colour
And we live in black and white
We dream, we dream in colour
And we live in black and white’.