“Music takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startle our wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence, and whereto.” The words of Ralph Waldo Emerson sill resonate with truth today. But instead of igniting these sentiments in me, music answers them. As Victor Hugo once said “Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and cannot remain silent.” Words make you think a thought, music makes you feel a feeling, and so a song makes you feel a thought. The answers to the questions I have never seem to come in words, only in feelings, and so music sometimes is the only answer.
“You’re from mars; you think like a freak.” In a heated argument, when I was 14 years old, my mother shouted these words at me. This was the first time I truly felt like a martian: the woman who gave birth to me was staring at me like I was a sideshow exhibition at a circus. I was an alien abomination, a creature from another planet. Like any dramatic teenager, I stomped off to my room to hide away for the day, but those angry words burned and stung in my head. Once in my room, I typed the words into Google search, hoping the vast expanses and infinite wisdom of the internet could help console me in my time of shock. If you type these words in today, you’ll get a whole host of links, usually for Bruno Mars, Veronica Mars, Life on Mars, and 30 Seconds to Mars, but when I was 14, Ballrooms of Mars by T. Rex revealed itself and I clicked on it. Although the name T. Rex usually connotes a large, carnivorous dinosaur with stubby arms and sharp teeth, this T. Rex was not of the same species. Instead of guttural sounds from a giant beast, I heard the ephemeral and effeminate voice of Marc Bolan.
“I'll call you thing, Just when the moon sings, And place your face in Stone, Upon the hill of stars, And gripped in the arms, Of the changeless madman, We'll dance our lives away, In the Ballrooms of Mars” Marc didn’t see my extraterrestrial origins as freakish or absurd; he saw it as beautiful and ethereal. T.Rex, unlike the long departed king of the prehistoric world, was non-threatening, strong without being rough, gentle without being weak. An article hailing Marc and the band once said that "for the first time in pop history, we have a superstar not projecting sex but romance. Sex is a part of it, but it's sex by courtesy of the magic prince, who is going to defile the young virgin in an atmosphere of blissful romance." And in a whirl-wind romance I fell in love with T. Rex. I jammed out in my car on the way to school while listening to “20th Century Boy,” pranced around my room to “Cosmic Dancer” and pondered the transient nature of peace, lying next to Jacob, listening to “Life’s a Gas.” T.Rex serenaded me with "Jeepster" moved me with "One Inch Rock," and helped me "blossom" with "Baby Boomerang."
“When people hear good music, it makes them homesick for something they never had, and never will have.” (Edgar Watson Howe) Before coming to London, the homeland of T-rextasy, I felt homesick for something I was never a part of, a place and time and feeling I'll never be able to experience first hand. Upon arrival, I had an uncanny feeling of coming home, of being closer to the place where a fellow martian landed. Although the streets of London are filled with their own kind of music, and the people walk to so many different "beats of a different drum" it's anxiety provoking to walk here, I still listen to T.Rex and feel homesick. I’ll never hear them play a live show, or watch them strut the stage in women’s boots, all glammed up with haloes of curls rhythmically radiating around their heads. I'll never get the chance to be seduced by the mystical Marc Bolan, or "twist and shout" or " let it all hang out". No, you won’t fool the children of the revolution, but you’ll never be one of them either.
“Without music, life would be an error” (Nietzsche) Without music, I would never have a way of answering all my impossible questions. “Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul” (Plato). They reverberate there, striking perfect harmony with the feelings that words cannot contain. T. Rex is the answer to my question: How does it feel to think like a martian? It feels like T. Rex.
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