Newport Folk Music Festival

I’ve been listening to NPR’s live coverage of the Newport Folk Festival this weekend, and I think I’ve finally figured out why I spend my time listening to public radio and not to music. Ditto for going to concerts: I almost never do. Because… I can’t do it without bawling. Showtunes tend to be the exception, but I can lose my shit over those too.

I have a very thin skin, under which roils a constant inferno of embattled emotions. (I had been quietly hoping that they would calm as I aged, but it seems that growing older is only making it easier to clamp them down and argue through them. They aren’t going anywhere.) Pierce it, and I cry. Not from sadness, necessarily. Usually not from sadness. Mostly it’s just the action of release that does it. The exultant loss of control and, in way, of self. That’s not something I want to happen at work, or on the bus, or even alone in my apartment most of the time. I’d rather listen to Wire Tap.

All this came up because, as I said, I’ve been listening to NPR’s coverage of the Newport Folk Fest, losing my shit. In my cubicle. (It’s a Sunday, so it’s cool.) And what I realized was, this isn’t so bad. Not many people I know experience music this way, so deep inside themselves. It isn’t pleasant by any means, but that doesn’t make it wrong.