Matt OConnor

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What is music to you? What does it give you?

This is a really great question. Unfortunately it's so great it could fill up this website with thoughts and commentary, I will leave this page open, and try to come up with the shortest answers I can, to this question. I tried this earlier and it went on for an hour and had no page breaks because I didn't know you could do those and it kinda needed some editing, so here we are lol! Music gives me a reason for living and is my will to live, even though so far there hasn't been that many material or financial things to like in liking it. It does at least give me the love of the people who have heard of me as I've sent my tunes around or played live. Even if there's not really a lot of shows so far, 99% of them were good shows, Everybody has one bad show, shit happens lol! Music is the love of my life, and through it I've met my favorite people., Some of those people aren't here anymore, and they mean the most because they gave the most while they were alive. Writing about each of them would take up a whole page each. Three of those people are college professors and two of them are Doctorates in music and they said I did a good job, so that's great. Music also gave me a song about Keith Richards called The Rolling Stone, that he liked enough to give me a thank you letter for. Even though nobody here has applauded that song, he loved it and that's enough for me and I still have the letter and I will frame it and it'll go on through my generations and I'll be pleased with that, thank you. Music, give me a really expensive life commitment that is very difficult to keep when I'm only currently on ssi money, but whatever I chose this and it chose me. Music unfortunately gave me endless band member changes to the point that I said, fine, I'm a solo artist then, so be it. This wasn't even always a personal thing or something any of them could help, it's just that music is a shit business and shit happens. Not everybody get to form and keep a band together for 50 years, or even less. Getting 4 or 5 people at once to agree on something is really hard work and you have to be really good with people, even when they don't always agree with you. It doesn't always work out, there's been 6 bands that formed and broke up so far. So be it, I signed up for this and I knew how tough it was. Music, gives me love though, and that's worth any of this. It comes with lots of great things that are so good when you're suffering and even homeless at times, for your art, too many to list here. When people love your music that does it all, even if sometimes, it's small. Its at least more than I had going in, I'm really grateful for all the love I got out of this, it was fantastic! Way too many examples to list here. I could go on more with this, but I think the last one really sums it up, music gives me love, and I love it. Thank you so much, music, you rule and rule all woo!!!