Music and OCD

Whenever I read something about OCD or meet someone who is, I’m instantly reminded of my own childhood which, not coincidentally, is where the roots of my interest in sound and music lie.

When I was a child, particularly ages 5 to 12, I’m fairly certain I was full-blown obsessive compulsive. I counted things, often times things there were a LOT of. I indugled privately in rituals and routines, mostly small and unelaborate, but highly repetitive. And I looked for and created patterns, often very subtle and complicated ones. I was not a slave to these indulgences. In fact, I rather enjoyed them, but I kept them very much to myself. I was, if a little awkward, at least fully functional. I got good grades… at least until girls and music became more important.

Now I know that OCD doesn’t just go away. So where did it go?

I think, in my very early teens, I realized that I had to choose between indulging it and having a normal life. In short, I became its master. It got trivialized, shunted off to the far reaches of my brain and left to run in the background.

But I realize that this little subroutine running in the back of my head is where my love for (and unique skills at) music are rooted. Not that the act of making music is in any way either an obsession or a compulsion. Rather, in repetition and pattern recognition, there are ideas to be found. Ideas worth exploring. And I sometimes wonder how much better (or at least more interesting) my music might be had I allowed my childhood compulsions to go unchecked into adulthood. In short, what if I hadn’t chosen a normal life? What if I had been unable to choose for myself?

I have known (and still do) adults who are full-blown OCD. Quite frankly, it looks like unshirted hell to me. Or at the very least, it looks exhausting and unproductive. But having escaped a not so mild case of it myself, it also looks like a prison cell with its doors wide open.

I certainly have no desire to spend my adult life counting steps and looking for patterns, or worse, but I often shudder at the works of art I have failed to imagine.