This is me. Part of it is an autistic coping mechanism; disorganized and chaotic sounds overwhelm me easily. Music, even if it’s loud, screeching metal or punk, is sound that’s under my control.

But even before I was diagnosed, music was my survival mechanism, just as a way to articulate the depression and anger and self-hate that was going through me. It was the ledge that I dug my fingernails into when I was feeling most suicidal. Or just when I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t get even the simplest stuff done.

One of the few songs I know that really describes this kind of attachment to music, using it to escape and explore the furthest reaches of yourself, is The Mountain Goats’ " Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod? "

In that song, John Darnielle is talking about surviving the physical assaults of his abusive stepfather, a kind of experience that I’ve never had to live through. But the centrality of his music is almost identical:

But I do wake you up, and when I do
You blaze down the hall and you scream
I’m in my room with the headphones on
Deep in the dream chamber

And then I’m awake and I’m guarding my face
Hoping you don’t break my stereo
Because it’s the one thing that I couldn’t live without
And so I think about that and then I sorta black out

One of the reasons this image grabbed my eye so quickly is that Lilo is clearly neurodivergent of some kind, and there’s a good chance she’s autistic. She’s one of my people.