Just Live: The Trick Is, You Have A Choice

You would never know there was an entrance to a club on this street. All you could see is a crowd of about two hundred people pushing their way towards the same direction as if trying to save themselves from some catastrophe about to happen. Where the heck were all these people trying to go? They were trying to get into one of the most exclusive clubs in town. The only way to get into this place was if you knew someone or if you had money to bribe the doormen. The club catered to the tastes of all people from around the globe. It would not be surprising on any given Saturday night to hear songs from Brazil, Italy, India, France or Lebanon. Their motto was, "We are all one!" At around 12 p.m., a man in a beige suit, smoking a cigarette, squeezed his way through to the door. He looked really sharp. There was a beautiful Latin woman holding his left hand as he hugged the doorman with his right arm, as if they were friends forever. He walked through the hallway shaking hands with every employee he saw. His table was waiting for him upstairs next to the Disc Jockey's booth. After greeting everyone he knew, he sat down with his woman awaiting the arrival of his friends, ordered two drinks and lit her cigarette. When the drinks arrived they both stood up and walked over to the edge of the balcony overlooking the huge dance floor swarming with people everywhere. As he kissed his girl, he felt like the luckiest man on the face of the earth. Just a few years later, this same man at one o'clock in the morning on a Saturday night was sitting in the basement of his parent's house screaming to the God who created him, "Why the f--k am I alive? Tell me or I give up on you and the world!" I am the man in this story. In this essay I am going to explore the reasons that caused me to have a breakdown that memorable night after battling many months with what I labeled as "clinical depression." I will discuss how music not only helped me get over my "depression," but how it actually helped to make it worse. I will also connect my experiences to the ideas and theories of various important sociological figures throughout its history. Let us begin with my life just a few years ago when everything seemed perfect. During that time my friends and I would religiously attend this club called M-80's every Saturday night. We went there so often that absolutely everyone knew us. To be even more precise, I knew everybody in there and introduced them to my friends. The reason I say this in such an arrogant way is because it made me feel very powerful being in the position to know the owners of the various huge clubs in Boston. I felt powerful being able to take care of everyone I knew trying to get inside, even if they were not twenty-one years old yet. Thomas Hobbes's theory that humans desire power certainly rang true during that time. The Disc Jockey was a personal friend of mine. As stated earlier, the music he played at the club came from many different places throughout the globe. Greeks and Italians would sing along and dance to Lebanese and Turkish songs and vice versa. The club was like a second home to all of us. Durkheim would say that we all held some type of a collective consciousness. Collective consciousness can be defined as the "totality of beliefs and sentiment common to the average members of society," (Adams 93) which in turn creates social solidarity or harmony. Most of the patrons were 1st generation born Americans, like myself, struggling with the pursuit of money in a place where everyone is supposedly equal. In the club, we were living this American philosophy. The music united all of us under one roof and under one God! This music transcended into my car and home. As I drove and listened to the tape from the previous Saturday, I would reminisce on some of the highlights of the night and look forward to next week. "Music is powerful at the level of social groups because it facilitates communication which goes beyond words, induces shared emotional reactions and supports the development of group identity" (DeNora, 51). …