Words will fail me here - especially after the triumphant concluding summarizing homerun that was the Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness post. But The Downward Spiral is the final piece to this 500-piece puzzle - and it’s the most important piece. It’s also the final piece of music, currently an emotional blur in my mind, that I need to pin down with writing like the other albums. Where to begin? The Downward Spiral. No album in my entire existence ever connected with me so immediately, created such a cathartic inner world, expressed my emotions so perfectly, and took my attitude about life as far as it could go. It’s an album that encompasses about a year from May 1994 to May 1995 but especially caught fire after the Nine Inch Nails Woodstock ‘94 performance in August 1994. I want to make an important point upfront that I’ve learned across the course of my life that separates me from nearly all music fans. During my almost 40 years on Earth, I’ve interacted with many people. People tend to listen to music as part of pop culture consumption, as stress relief, as motivating music, as connoisseurs and aficionados, as partiers, as background music, and - as I do for a lot of music - as an aesthetic pleasure. I envy these grounded people in many ways who can just chill out and enjoy music at this level and remain there. With the best music in my life, it goes WAY beyond any of those uses. And for my favorite albums, you’ve seen that the level of personal connection is more like an inner world or a place to mentally escape like a novel, fictional world, or parallel universe. The Downward Spiral is the epitome of that, and why I get REALLY REALLY REALLY annoyed at music consumers who seem to just taste test music like coffee or craft beer. I NEVER saw The Downward Spiral as music to put on in the background or critically appreciate. I NEVER saw The Downward Spiral as something to just put on and enjoy. In a boring, mundane, overly scripted, predictable world, The Downward Spiral spoke a truth, cut through the bullshit, and plugged into the meaning of something. It said things that no one else said, and it felt things that no one else allowed me to feel. It created a stark, Gothic, inner world where my repressed, bullied, and defeated self would roar one last time with dignity before it died or descended into some underworld, never to be heard from again. And at the time, I felt it articulated the final word to family, friends, peers, teachers, and adults who never understood me, never bothered to understand me, and would never be able to understand me even if they tried. Yes, it’s selfish, self-absorbed, and self-pitying - the kind of attitude most adults see as so limited in perspective in a world where people are fighting cancer, starvation, disease, poverty, and mental illness. Why didn’t a little self-absorbed shithead like me go volunteer somewhere or go to church or become entrepreneurial? Why didn’t I go see real people who suffered so that I got smacked upside the head into happiness? I would argue that my days spent with The Downward Spiral - completely paradoxically - were the best, healthiest, and most spiritually awakening experiences of my entire life. By severing myself from a desire to merge with social groups and become accepted, I forever separated myself from any need to rest my hope upon people. From The Downward Spiral onward, I followed my own path and wasn’t afraid to challenge, disagree, or show contempt for things my friends did or showed interest in. I began to rely on instinct and intuition to chart a course through my life, scoffing at the uptight adults and peers who gave bland advice about “career paths” or things you should do to be successful in life. When people worried about my future more than me, I laughed at them. I still laugh at them. After all, I’ve mentally been through The Downward Spiral on an emotional level that they can never understand. I explored the abyss - contemplating suicide, self-destruction, self-hate, self-loathing, and contempt that only The Downward Spiral can still evoke. I almost killed myself, folks. I lived each track of this album in painstaking detail. At times, this album was the only thing that spoke to me with any honesty or authenticity as a teenager. No one could touch me or keep up with me here. I’ve lived through that, and that’s why I find things like people’s obsessions with their houses or politics or business-y things or taking marketing seriously to be amusing at best, and tedious at worst. Other than for utilitarian purposes, who the fuck cares? Why do people get so worked up about such trivia? It’s like I came out of a Dantean hell full of awareness and insight, and people are yammering about condos and festivals and weddings. And yet, there are the people who understand - who have gone through experiences that give them the same or better perspectives. Facing death, in whatever form, changes you. And going through the William Jamesian arc of innocence, despair, and enlightenment changes you. Today, only God and following His will trump my experience with The Downward Spiral. It remains the most influential inner experience in my entire life. Paradoxically, it cleansed my soul of horrible thoughts, allowed me to take myself to brink of suicide and back, and gave me such a catharsis that I remain both separated from yet empathic toward other people to this day. In the strangest of ways, The Downward Spiral turned me into a real human being for the first time. But let’s unpack these thoughts and figure out why.
I remember listening to The Downward Spiral on cassette outside on Jason V’s patio in his backyard with Jason Z, Jon, and maybe some others there. They were playing with padded swords, really into the details of the game and fighting as usual, while I watched from the porch. Jason V had brought out his stereo so that I could listen to music - similar to amusing a kid while the adults talked. If I wanted to hang out with my friends, I had to accept this compromise. I had taped The Downward Spiral off of my friend Chris’s CD and was listening to it for the first time. It was spring 1994, late 11th grade, and I was about three months into the unleashing of my personality for the first time. I had just turned 17, that birthday mixed with the intoxication of my intelligence and humor finally being recognized by people who I had long admired from afar alongside the darkness I had lived in for so many years that cannot go away overnight. I also had a new crush that felt intense as a supernova (see the Mellon Collie post for a better description) – and simultaneously, with full hormones raging, I felt the utter joy of seeing someone so beautiful who talked to me while telling myself it was hopeless because I was a vile, worthless, human being who she could never like. These extremes, like fuses (not candles) burning at both ends, made life at this juncture full of the highest highs and lowest lows. Dirt worked in 1993 but became less effective in 1994 because my recent social success and love for this girl added an intensity that Dirt lacked. I needed music, if it existed, that could describe these new feelings to myself – such extremes, such joy, such pain, such anger, such rage, such self-hate, such self-loathing, such an urge to destroy.
That day, I really felt estranged from my friends. I increasingly viewed their activities such as live AD&D role playing as alien. They cared so much about the hit points of an orc or spent time talking about the intricacies of making padded swords or just sat for fucking hours around a fucking computer. So when I watched them arguing with each other about technicalities as they fought with padded swords, The Downward Spiral entered my ears for the first time. It was eerie. Even on that first listen, something almost supernatural happened. It was too right. Too on. Too relevant. Watching my friends and already feeling cynical and jaded about their activities, the music became like an all-seeing lens, and life became hyperclear. My eyes gleamed, thinking of all my feelings and experiences that I could not quite articulate. Suddenly, I understood – and realized no one else understood but me. From this point forward, I fully separated myself mentally from my friends. Forever. While I still hung out with groups of friends, The Downward Spiral forever severed a desire to merge with groups of people. Before The Downward Spiral, I still attempted and often desired that merging, trying to care about my friends playing AD&D, live role playing, and Magic: The Gathering. I enjoyed late night conversations about dreams, kindred spirits, and the astral plane - trying to push these conversations further. I may have felt a distance at times, but I kept trying to fit into my “core group.” Sometimes I felt that I could get through to Jason V, Jason Z, and Jon sometimes - pushing past the minutia. But when people like Sean, Greg, Frank, Mike, Ethan, and others were around, it was hopeless. They wanted to have a good time, talk about role-playing and computers, play intricate fantasy-related games, and laugh. If I was lucky, we had the common ground of making fun of high school and sometimes listened to music. But otherwise, I was a third or fifth wheel. After The Downward Spiral, years of frustration about these friends finally exploded to the surface. While I still hung out with them, I mentally severed myself from any connection to them or others - a severing that has lasted to this day. Ironically, as my social options expanded in 12th grade, The Downward Spiral still made me feel unique, alone, and unable to be understood by anyone despite sampling new people and groups of people - and even when these people seemed interested in me. In my head, I had a unique worldview that cut through the bullshit of life and I had little patience with the minutia that seemed to fixate my friends. I didn’t care about this shit. Instead, I cared about The Downward Spiral. About getting through to the TRUTH of something about life. Ideally, that would mean life-changing writing, reading, and conversation where my friends and I figured things out and got to know each other as people in the process - sharing our deepest, darkest, and most meaningful thoughts. In reality, socializing involved a lot of mundane, dead time spent obsessing over details related to hobbies and interests and a lot of emotional evasion. So, The Downward Spiral taught me that getting at the TRUTH often requires making some noise, throwing a chair across the room so to speak, and ultimately relying on self-destruction if none of the above worked. It’s a desire of mine that’s both a blessing and a curse to this day. In 2016, it’s why I have a lot of friends who have great conversations with me but why I don’t regularly hang out with a group of people or have a girlfriend. I’m too fucking heavy, all of the time. Although I’ve learned to lighten up (especially in my 30s) and my humor always serves as an ace in the hole, the intensity and lessons of The Downward Spiral remain in my blood and DNA. I’m too much if I’m around you too long, and I simply shut off if conversation remains too mundane or focused on minutia for too long. Sorry. And don’t worry. I pay the price every day for this aspect of my personality.
This intensity results from The Downward Spiral articulating the premise of the Doors’s “Break on Through.” Few people break on through, but once you do your worldview is forever changed - even if your experience now isolates you from the rest of humanity. You might ask, “Why go on this journey?” Some of us are called, pulled, tugged in this direction. It’s hard to explain. During that moment on Jason V’s porch, I heard The Downward Spiral and knew deep down that I had found what I was looking for. I needed to go there. It’s a spiritual journey like Dante’s Divine Comedy. In Varieties of Religious Experience, William James explains that people all over the world who hold a variety of beliefs follow the same path to spiritual enlightenment. These people always go through innocence, despair, and enlightenment. The metaphor of the Garden of Eden applies here. The Bible may not be literal but the narrative arc maps onto the way we go through this enlightenment - from the Garden of Eden to the absence from God to the redemption of Jesus. The Downward Spiral articulates the despair stage of spiritual enlightenment. But more specifically, I needed The Downward Spiral to bust through the painful tedium of normalcy and the perceived limitations of how my friends dealt with life. I watched them gravitate to Frank Zappa, the Beastie Boys, or gangsta rap. That music used cleverness, silliness, and macho aggression to react to the world. However, I didn’t see life as something to disdain, mock, or just roll with in a humorous or clever way. That required emotional distance that felt like the Muppets in the balcony. Instead, I wanted - like Dante, like Hamlet, like William Blake, like William James, like Jim Morrison, like Henry Rollins - to break through some barrier and express myself to the absolute fullest. That meant delving into my tortured emotions, desires, and dreams with naked emotional vulnerability. That meant, deep down, that hope still remained despite my anger. I wanted to entirely express my pain, frustration, and despair about life in a melodramatic, theatrical, and self-destructive way. Heavy metal and grunge approximated that feeling from 1991 to 1994, with a few albums like Dirt, Bloody Kisses, and Ride the Lightning getting close to what I sought. But it was never good enough. But then The Downward Spiral finally nailed it. Utterly and completely. It nailed it.
Throughout the rest of 1994, The Downward Spiral was not just music. It was in my bloodstream. It was me. Every damn second of that entire album. To this day, I have never experienced the emotional catharsis that The Downward Spiral provided from any other piece of music, and I never felt so alive. In those days of 1994, I recall how my new severed attitude impacted everything. My friendships with Jason V, Jason Z, Jon, Todd, Mary Anne, Kim, Heather, Dan, Sean, and Frank. My delight at the inside jokes and alternate universes that included Kozak (our vice-principal), our physics teacher, and our health teacher. My rebellious defiant arguing with my 11th grade English teacher. Our Advanced Science class that was really “Advanced Study Hall” where we contemptuously didn’t do much work and just hung out in delight. Our 11th grade Darien Lake physics trip that turned into one of my favorite days of all time. The Colgate Seminars that I talked about in the Promised Land post. During those days, I think I was more alive than I ever will be again. My joy, my laughter, and my feelings of love were so intense and unabashed. And the pain, the rage, and the darkness - represented by The Downward Spiral - were equally unabashed – at times making me feel like Dirt was a happy album. Unfortunately The Downward Spiral also represents my darker side that I feel ashamed about today. For example, I got so frustrated one day in 12th grade a few days before Christmas when my friends Jason Z and Sean tied plastic bags of candy that I was selling for my senior trip so tightly to some lab equipment in Advanced Science that I could not untie them. With The Downward Spiral in my head, I got so angry that I just tore at the bags until I ripped them open, flung the candy everywhere on the floor, and walked out of the classroom. Everyone in the class stared at me in stunned silence. When I came back maybe 10 minutes later, Jason Z and Sean were walking on eggshells around me and helping me pick up the candy. I glorified in those rare moments when I felt that The Downward Spiral - the world in my head - broke through for a moment. “See?” I wanted to broadcast. “Don’t fuck with me, you fuckers! You don’t understand my pain!” It was a dangerous, unhealthy, self-absorbed, and unempathetic game I played in 12th grade. I used my moods for effect, to manipulate others, to get their attention, to open up emotional conversation by force, and to try to get at that TRUTH.
This could easily become an album where the track-by-track analysis grows lengthy, especially because I lived each song so thoroughly in my head. But this isn’t music appreciation - this is an essay about the album’s meaning in my life, so a few highlights will suffice to build upon previous points. First, I should note that a major ingredient in The Downward Spiral’s accessibility are the cold electronic pulses such as on the opening to “Heresy” or the Depeche Mode-like stoicness of the choruses to “Ruiner.” Only that cold electronic pulse mixed with the guitar-fueled rage could encapsulate the tension between my cold heart and hot rage, between spiritual deadness and unleashed anger. “Mr. Self Destruct” perfectly basks in this tension, feeling like my heart’s coldness interspersed with my attempts to shine a light on my anger in front of others. “Piggy” is menacing through its abrupt absence of noise, as if I’m exposing myself emotionally. The refrain of “nothing can stop me now” was the opening to this inner world. The gates had opened. There was no going back. I was entering uncharted territory. Reznor sings, “Nothing is turning out the way I planned” during an organ playing soothing chords. “Heresy”’s opening woke me up and I embraced the cold, electronic pulse as an alternative to heavy metal. At the time, I raged against God and just spit in the face of Christianity, and so I reveled in this rejection. “March of the Pigs” is the closest to fun on The Downward Spiral - just pure moshing destruction coated in that soothing electronic pulse between bursts of rage. Even a song like “Closer,” which apparently became a strip club favorite, to me was a song of self-hate and self-immolation. To me, “I want to fuck you like an animal” was a rare, naked moment of facing my own raging desires during the year I was 17. I felt both drawn to and ashamed about sex - hating my body and the way I looked, feeling no woman would ever want to be with me. After “Closer,” we were definitely getting somewhere. I had long left behind my friends and even albums like Dirt. “Ruiner” builds up the existing rage until we hit those Depeche Mode-like choruses where I felt my eyes open like a god. I felt I saw all clearly in those moments, seeing the fallen world for what it was - a cesspool. “The Becoming” is almost too emotional to write about. That early weird part feels like my ugly, emotionally exposed body and self as it walked through high school every day, a target for bullying and rejection like a pinata for all to hit. Suddenly, it goes acoustic and then...it explodes! It represented my becoming. Reznor whispers and screams about the noise inside his head on a level that I had never articulated up until that point. “Won’t give up, it wants me dead, goddamn this noise inside my head.” It was unprecedented and remains unprecedented. No single song has ever opened me up like that. “I Do Not Want This” feels like a comedown after “The Becoming,” but it fleshes out my feelings of romantic rejection in high school. We crank up to a frenzied, incoherent, suicidal rage until “Big Man and a Gun,” and then there’s the comedown. I had let out all of my rage. Now what? The last part of the album feels like a fall from grace, lying on the ground, crawling on my belly in shit, and finally just flushing myself down a hole – like I deserve. “A Warm Place,” an instrumental, feels like the peace I desired, bleeding into “Eraser.” “Eraser” articulated my desire to just erase myself from existence. If no one wanted me or loved me, then don’t worry. I’d erase myself. Hearing Reznor sing, “Kill me” over and over and over until it sounds like this throat had ruptured was one of the most dangerous things I’ve ever listened to. I was gone in those moments. “Reptile” represents a transformed me, a reptile of sorts so far gone that I’m just an embodied form of contempt slithering around the world. It’s the only song here that feels like I am in an alternate world somewhere full of machines and reptiles and slime. It feels Gothic and cyberpunk and fallen. The title track heightened the danger - which seems impossible. I’ll be blunt. It’s about suicide - the act, in detail. It’s the furthest I’ve stared into the abyss. The juxtaposition of the muffled screaming in the background along with Reznor’s completely apathetic description of shooting oneself in the head is probably the most horrifying moment I’ve ever experienced in music. But it doesn’t end there. We conclude with “Hurt,” made famous again later by Johnny Cash. It’s the song that – after the self-destruction – made me ask “What have I become?” And I truly asked that. How could the little happy boy who used to play with He-Mans and G.I. Joes and Nintendo, who once believed he could be a dentist or a rock star and have a girlfriend one day, get to this low of a point?
Art finally became life on my senior trip to Washington D.C. in April 1995, a few days before I turned 18. During those dangerous days after a year of livid inner rage and self-hate unmitigated by anything, The Downward Spiral was brought to life during the final two days of that four-day trip. Take all of my unresolved feelings, add sleep deprivation, throw me in with about 25 of my peers including the girl I liked and a few of my friends who I also felt secret envy and jealousy toward, a tight schedule, a motel floor to ourselves, a fantasy world away from home, a lack of structure, and the mystery of the night, and what you get is life lived in an intensity that I know will never happen again. The first two days were ecstasy and the last two days were hell. During the first two days, I was on with humor, conversation, and riffed off everything – even the plane ride, the bus ride, the subway ride, buying Doritos at a convenience store, watching Sandra Bullock interviewed on Letterman. Every moment was beautiful. But during those last two days, I socially isolated myself from everyone, brooded openly, snapped at people, and, in the lowest moment, dragged behind my friends at an amusement park - so bitter about Todd and Kim not paying attention to me and seeing others hover around them like sycophants, at times literally physically preventing me from getting near them - until I was alone. The Downward Spiral raged in my mind as I thought through the 13-song buildup, anger, comedown, crawling, and the flush – and now I could ask myself, removed from Sauquoit entirely, “What have I become?” People milled around me, strangers, in another state. No one cared about me. And everyone from Sauquoit, the fodder for my rage, was gone. I almost committed suicide in that moment – the ONLY time I ever contemplated it that seriously. And then, something inside told me to live. I knew, going forward, that I would never feel as alive from this point forward. Ironically, by choosing to live, something pure that had blossomed and raged for a year had just died inside me forever. For the first time in my life, I felt the long road ahead. But I had two choices. One – kill myself now, knowing I had already tasted life’s extreme joys and pains. Or two – live, knowing that while life may not ever be as intense, there might be something else around the corner that eventually is more delightful.
Okay, I just took you through some dark territory. But I want to affirm and comfort here by reminding you that this is a journey seen throughout art and literature for millennia. The Downward Spiral reminds me of The Odyssey, Dante, Hamlet’s self-absorption, the Romantic poets, William James, The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises, Hermann Hesse, Jim Morrison, and Henry Rollins’s mentality. I chose to live after this moment on my senior trip and after my full experience with every second of The Downward Spiral. It’s like you find positivity by default if you stick around after an experience like this - just as William James once meticulously documented. As dark as the experience I just described, it’s why I never liked alternate avenues such as Frank Zappa or other clever rather than emotional artists. By experiencing The Downward Spiral along with my life at the time, I eventually learned empathy for others who struggle with their own demons. These demons teach us a lot if we later help others through life’s shoals. That’s the connection between me as a teenager going through this depressed self-absorption and then later contributing to society consistently and happily. Telling someone to “get over it” or just volunteer or go to church or do something superficial to bootstrap your way out of depression misses the whole point of spiritual development. This isn’t my theory. Both Jesus and the Dalai Lama teach it. It’s a spiritual law, taught by your own Scriptures if you claim to be religious. First, understand your spiritual gifts. Second, contribute those spiritual gifts to the world. The word “understand” is the most important word here. If you don’t understand yourself, then you are not functioning fully. We can never completely understand ourselves, but we’ve got to try more than 0%. And part of understanding yourself is by getting to the root of your problems, issues, and identity. Zappa and similar clever detachment avoids this responsibility entirely. A journey with Zappa will be musically satisfying but eventually lead you to mock the world, laugh at people’s misfortunes, and think you know it all because your self-righteousness seems to accurately judge the world and put you in a superior position. You learn nothing that way. A path like The Downward Spiral is the way you learn. Because it’s the way that Odysseus learned. How Jesus learned. How Buddha learned. How Dante learned. How we learned through Hamlet, Jake Barnes, and Jay Gatsby. How Hermann Hesse learned. How recovering alcoholics and drug addicts learn. How Henry Rollins learned. And how many people I know and love learned. It’s the only way, and it involves debasement, despair, and naked emotional vulnerability that hurts so bad as you challenge the fabric of the world and everything you thought and knew to be true. It really hurts. But that’s why the insights gleaned feel true and universal rather than self-righteous and exclusive.
The Downward Spiral seems like a strange album now. When I listen to it, I time travel. I can’t really enjoy it for the music. It’s a time machine, and I can return to that state of mind no matter how old I get. When it’s playing, I can smell 1994 and early 1995. And then it returns to the present again when the album is over. When Promised Land became my healing album of choice after the senior trip, The Downward Spiral became irrelevant as an album, even as soon as graduation in June 1995. However, The Downward Spiral lives on as an encapsulation of a time when I was 17: young, impulsive, moody, black, depressed, despairing, in love, agonizing over love, hating myself, loathing myself, self-absorbed, extreme highs, extreme lows. It reminds me when I see high schoolers acting out and acting up that I cannot be above them. I was like them once, possibly even more extreme than they could ever imagine. And it reminds me of a time when I was 100% alive. I’d like to say I am now, but life does wear you down after a while. Responsibilities are necessary, but they dehumanize you. Your job and work become commodities that you supply to the world in exchange for a roof over your head. Many attempts to enjoy life and party and hang out with people often feel empty, devoid of real content and relationships and instead focused on minutia, trivia, and social obligation. It’s only in rare creative moments, or an occasional conversation, or an occasional flicker during the day, or sometimes during a celebration like a wedding, that even a glimmer of the life I felt during my Downward Spiral days emerges.
But that’s okay. Spiritual law also teaches that every day and every minute can’t be a party or the best experience ever. Instead, we must find a consistent, foundational joy as we mine our spiritual gifts and contribute them to the world while creating real relationships with people. For me, The Downward Spiral eventually led me to understand the works of William James, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and many others who urge that finding deep enlightenment is the only way to live a long, healthy, happy life. I love my life now for its simple joys, and I’m thankful for its blessings.
But I am not afraid to acknowledge for one final time in this Top 500 that a lifetime of joy will never, ever rival the all-seeing life I felt when I was 17 in 1994 and 1995. It took a long time for me to admit this fact to myself, but I finally accepted it. Once, in a way that is not sustainable, I saw all and lived all through The Downward Spiral. And while memories or reuniting with people who lived through this time with me may bring me back to these years, The Downward Spiral is the surest way to summon it back in full force and feel young again – with all its sweet joys and bitter pains. It’s odd to have a favorite album that hasn’t been relevant in my life since about June 1995. But its impact is that important, that startling, and that alive in my life. My philosophy, attitude, attention span, social life, mindshare, creative preoccupations, and life path all originate from The Downward Spiral. When I roam around places like Bonnaroo or networking events or hip city bars with craft beer, The Downward Spiral always lives in my head and remains a counter-philosophy and defining experience against which I navigate through my relationships with people and places. If I seem to grow bored in a social situation where people are discussing TV shows, movies, cars, or houses and you see me zone out, then my mind might have returned for a brief moment to my experience with The Downward Spiral more than 20 years ago. If seem to not take the wonders of business and marketing and ROI as seriously as I should, then I’m probably thinking about how only the joys of life matter after that day on my senior trip when I almost ended my existence. Working 80 hours a week to make capitalism more efficient and the rich richer just isn’t a main preoccupation of mine, despite some intellectually interesting elements related to that world. And if I don’t seem that interested in food or beers or sports or something on NPR or politics or whatever, then I’m probably mulling over something related to the lineage of spiritual thought that connects Jesus to Dante to The Downward Spiral to Henry Rollins. It’s not that the above things aren’t fun or important. It’s just that my preoccupations are different, having changed in 1994 and 1995 during the days of 12th grade and The Downward Spiral. I want to conclude on a purely nostalgic note. One time when I was moving in the 2000s, I stumbled upon a Details magazine that my friend Todd had bought me while he went on a bus trip to Syracuse. It was typical of Todd to go off on mysterious adventures and come back with some scrap from the bigger world outside high school. The magazine is dated April 1995. It features Trent Reznor on the cover and an interview with him inside called “The Art of Darkness.” I must have read that interview a zillion times and also loved his dark, evil look in the pictures. This interview embodied the entire mythology surrounding The Downward Spiral. But I also read about the wider world through that magazine, and Todd accidentally gave me something that formed a bridge between The Downward Spiral and the world that awaited me afterward in college, cities, and real life. Inside, there are stories about visiting Dublin, trekking through the Utah desert, and examining the dark side of New Orleans. There are tips about men’s fashion, alcohol, sex, and relationships. There are reviews of strange new movies and books, There are interviews with Liv Tyler and Moby. Because I had yet to emerge into the real world, this single magazine, anchored around that Trent Reznor interview during the time of The Downward Spiral, made it seem like this album was actually part of the wider world. I wasn’t alone in my feelings because Reznor talked about his depression in a cool magazine, surrounded by other cool things. This magazine issue was just so cool and exciting on so many levels, seeming to hold the promises of a rich, full life ahead after high school and during the then unimaginable days of college. There was so much to explore about life!!! Now, when I look at the magazine, I hurt with nostalgia. It’s 21 years ago now. The magazine freezes that moment in time as if in amber, April 1995, the month of the senior trip when I felt so alive. Everything made sense, even when it made no sense. In the 21 years since, it’s good that I can see those Downward Spiral days in the context of a spiritual journey articulated by Dante and William James. But I’m reminded that if I leave the despair behind, then magic still awaits around any corner. Sometimes it’s just an album that hits you right or a friend buying you a magazine or reading a new author or meeting a new friend or finding a new mentor that can awaken the magic all over again. Because my favorite album is enshrined at #1 like that Details magazine is enshrined in April 1995, this painful, vivid nostalgia tempts me to disparage 2016 in lieu of 1995. But instead I conclude this essay - and the entire Top 500 - by understanding that those magical moments in 1995 simply show me that magic is always around us, waiting to be accessed. The key? Opening myself up emotionally, truly, and sincerely to my feelings - only now enriched through perspective, experience, and spiritual joy so that I can more easily look for and create magic, rather than demand or expect it like my emotionally immature 17 year old self. And yes, maybe I will never find an album as magical as The Downward Spiral or a time as magical as April 1995. But I’m still alive, I’ve had some pretty incredible experiences since April 1995, and...what the hell...I might as well keep searching! You never know what’s around the corner. And as T.S. Eliot once wrote, endings are often beginnings.