Guest Post: William Dickerson, Author of NO ALTERNATIVE

Music is a drug.

No, really, it is. Music can significantly increase the levels of serotonin in a listener’s brain, which, as a result, positively impacts mood, sexual desires and the physical manifestation of those desires, overall cognitive function, regulation of body temperature, sleep and memory. Take that iPod out of the cabinet, plug in your headphones, and prescribe yourself a song.

The ability of music to impact, and indelibly mark, our lives cannot be underestimated. Melody, and the infinite ways of conveying melody, has a way of bypassing left-brain modes of communication and injecting itself directly into our bloodstreams. Music, for me, is a roadmap to my memories. I often mark moments in my life by the songs I was listening to at the time – for some reason, I can almost always remember the music associated with the happenings in my life, which then helps me place the moment, reconstruct the event, and relive the memory with some semblance of context.

Here are just a few examples:

Nirvana’s “Drain You;” circa 1995: I played over-and-over-again while pumping myself up to call my first girlfriend and ask her out on our first date.

Weezer’s “Only In Dreams;” circa 1995: The first song I crowd-surfed to while listening to it live as Weezer played it at Roseland Ballroom.

Cowboy Junkies’ cover of “Blue Moon;” circa 1999: Used as an aid for sense memory (actor lingo) in preparing for my first public acting performance in college, where I had to “cry” in a scene.

Metallica’s “Don’t Tread On Me;” September 11th, 2001: In an effort to get my mind off the tragedy that was befalling the country, and the world, just a few blocks away from the skyscraper I was sitting in, I turned on the Opie & Anthony radio show on 102.7 and listened to them play this song. It was an unabashed appeal to those listeners looking for revenge, the immediate and swift kind, as the song preaches “settling the score….and preparing for war.” It’s a song that at that moment, for better or worse, appealed to the salivary glands of a nation scorned. It epitomized the knee-jerk reaction to a tremendously complex situation that no doubt lead many to initially justify the unending quagmire we got ourselves into.

Radiohead’s “All I Need;” April 30th, 2010: The song that I danced to with my wife, Rachel, at our wedding. It’s difficult to put the importance of this particular merger of song and moment into words. However, what I can say is that beyond sealing our love for each other, the moment proved that Radiohead can be danced to.

Some of these moments, clearly, are more resonant than others; they’re just some examples I thought I would share. While reviewing them, and thinking about how they are linked permanently to music, I can’t help but mention three landmark moments in my life a music listener: the time I got my first walkman, the time I got my first CD player, and the time I got my first iPod. These moments, while marked by the excitement of new technology being introduced into my life, took on greater significance when music was played through them. In each of these cases, the significance was punctuated by The Beastie Boys. The first tape cassette to play through my walkman was “License To Ill,” the first CD to play through my CD player was “Check Your Head,” and the first MP3 album to play through my iPod was “To The 5 Boroughs.” It became tradition to christen my new music players with the B-Boys (make some noise!), which makes the passing of their founder, Adam “MCA” Yauch, even more saddening for me. I never met the man, though I did see them perform live once at Madison Square Garden; nevertheless, I was still greatly saddened by his loss. I instantly felt a void, as I’m sure most of his fans did when they heard the news. I grew up listening to his beats and his words, and those moments in my life that are marked by his music have now been marked by his death, by the fact that he will not be creating any more music, music that would have been the first thing I played on whatever the next technology through which music is played hits the
market.

Music connects the dots. And it’s music that I used as a framework for my novel, “No Alternative.” The landscape is the grunge era of the early 90’s, a milieu that the Beastie Boys were very much a part of, in which teenagers (the real ones who lived through it and the fictitious ones in my book) never felt more alone – this, at the very least, was the standard set by their moniker: Generation X. However, it was through music, which seemed to reflect that loneliness, disaffection and angst, that brought an army of teenagers together. This movement in music, in my opinion, has never been matched - - it was a cultural phenomenon, in both the worlds of alternative and rap music. It was a time when teenagers felt alienated, whether as a result of their place in the world or the hormones whirling inharmoniously inside their bodies. However, at this moment in 1994, teens were able to harness what is often uncontrollable energy through the music they played and listened to.

Music can do more than just mark one’s life, and through those markings, enhance the quality of it. If music is a drug, then life is, arguably, its active ingredient.

William Dickerson graduated from The College of The Holy Cross with a degree in English and received his Masters of Fine Arts in Directing from The American Film Institute.  He is a writer/director whose work has been recognized by film festivals across the country and who recently completed his debut feature film, Detour, which was acquired by Level 1 Entertainment whose company credits include RENDITION, GRANDMA’S BOY and STRANGE WILDERNESS. No Alternative is his first novel. You can find him on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/noalternative.novel 


NO ALTERNATIVE is a coming-of-age drama that drills a hole into the world of suburban American teenagers in the early 90's.

Thomas Harrison is determined to start his own alternative band, an obsession that blinds him to what's either the mental collapse, or the eruption of musical genius, of his little sister, Bridget. Bridget boldly rejects her brother's music, and the music of an entire generation of slackers, by taking on the persona of an X-rated gangsta' rapper named Bri Da B.

NO ALTERNATIVE probes the lives of rebellious kids who transition into adulthood via the distortion pedals of their lives in an era when the Sex, Drugs & Rock'n'Roll ethos was amended to include Suicide in its phrase.

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