Even as I write this, a million thoughts race through my head: Is writing this stupid? Will people ridicule me? Will people think I’m crazy, disingenuous, narcissistic, or self-important? Will people think I am just seeking attention, jumping on some sort of bandwagon? Will other people forever think less of me?

In daily life, I might think a thousand thoughts like this each day, often social in nature. For instance, I avoid crosswalks when I’m by myself. No, I’m not afraid of being run over; I imagine that people will judge me for waiting for the light instead of just going, but I also don’t want passing cars to think I’m an idiot for jumping out into the road. I can’t stand it, so I often walk a hundred yards away from an intersection and then cross the street. I imagine people will judge me for all kinds of things. I constantly replay the interactions and conversations I have with people, checking for “mistakes” and imagining exactly how I might have hurt someone by mistake and what awful things people must think about me. Then before I realize it I am also imagining all the frightening repercussions of this imaginary judgement…

This might seem kind of ridiculous (it certainly is). I don’t think anyone else thinks as hard about crosswalks as I do. But unhealthy patterns of thought can affect other aspects of your life and it’s directly impacted my life in profound ways. I avoided being a classroom music teacher for so long because “those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach”, and because I could imagine all kinds of things people would think if they saw me doing the hokey pokey or singing “Mary Had a Little Lamb” with a group of kids. I have gone out of my way to avoid making friends for my entire adult life. I have avoided countless other things that scare me. And avoiding scary things only makes them scarier…

And I worry about worrying. I worry my focus on these negative thoughts steals my attention from whatever task is at hand. I worry about what it does to my brain chemistry. And I worry that if I don’t worry I will stop caring about the world around me, and that would be a much more terrible outcome.

At first, these thoughts are just weeds that sprout up here and there. But if left untended, they can quickly spread into a noxious, overgrown, thorny wilderness, choking the healthy flora of your mind and leaving you lost in the dark corners of your imagination. And while you’re trapped there you miss the rest of the world around you, great people and great moments you will never get back.

This song (and others like it) is about surviving in that wilderness, and eventually finding your way out. That’s what music like this has always been about for me. This song is like throwing up a wall, stopping ravenous hordes of negative thoughts dead in their tracks. It’s a levee that keeps the crashing waves from flooding your mind. It’s about imagining the stronger version of yourself, about turning anxiety into a fearsome, focused energy. An energy you can control and use, not one that consumes you. With this music, something self-destructive becomes constructive. And underneath all the fear, and the minor keys, and the ferocious guitars there is joy, passion, fun, and playfulness. That’s what this is really about.

I really like the rhythm guitars here, so much so that it took a long time to come up with the right melody, one that didn’t cover up the riffs but complemented them. It’s kind of a reverse of the more typical songwriting approach, where you start with a melody and then add the accompaniment to enhance it. The melody here almost sounds like a riff itself, being less flowing and accentuating the pick attack. The solo was improvised and the solo section is actually a blues form, adding just a little chromatic side slip to make it darker and more aggressive. It’s another one of those small ways I have been able to use all that jazz knowledge to find new ideas for myself without sounding anything like jazz.