Hi, I'm Tristan
Tides of Sound is written by a 30-year-old from Vermont, trying to make sense of two things that have shaped his life in equal measure: music, and the work of staying mentally well.
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My Story
Some people like music. I feel it — the way it moves through you before you've had time to think about what it's doing. I know exactly where that came from. My father has worked in radio for as long as I can remember, and growing up in Vermont, my weekends were spent with him. I'd set my alarm to the station he was on, just to hear his voice first thing in the morning. And every day, without fail, he would fill the house with classical music. He played records the way other people lit candles — deliberately, for the feeling it would create in the room. Not as background — as a presence. I didn't fully understand what I was receiving then. I do now.
My parents separated when I was very young, and though I knew it was for the best, it brought a particular kind of difficulty that's hard to name when you're living inside it. Weekdays were chaotic in ways that left a mark — on my mental state, on my schooling, on the version of me I was becoming without realizing it. But the weekends with my dad were something else entirely. They were a blissful escape. We'd go to the Vermont Symphony Orchestra whenever we had the chance, sitting together in that stillness that only live classical music can create. He brought a kind of light into my life that I'm not sure he even knows the full weight of.
2022 was the hardest year of my life. My paternal grandparents — my people, the ones who always had my back and loved me without condition — both passed away. Being their only grandchild, I was their light, and they were mine. But 2022 also held the greatest gift of my life: my son was born that same year, on the morning after my grandmother's funeral. And my grandfather, though his time was short, was lucky enough to meet him before he passed. Life and loss in the same breath — I'm not sure anything has ever humbled me more deeply. Their loss cracked something open in me that I hadn't been prepared for. Depression followed, quietly at first, then undeniably. Looking back, I can see I'd been feeling off for years, each one leaving me a little further from solid ground. But grief made it impossible to ignore.
In those months, music was the one place I could still feel something. When everything else went flat and unreachable, I could press play and feel something real move through me — not happiness, not resolution, but presence. A temporary shelter. A reminder that I was still capable of being moved, which meant I was still capable of getting through.
Tides of Sound is the space I built for that experience — and for everyone who knows exactly what I mean. I'm not a therapist or a scientist. I'm a listener and a writer from Vermont, 30 years old, still learning what music has been doing to me my whole life. My father is now up in Maine, but his influence is everywhere in this. This whole thing is, in many ways, a letter of gratitude to him.
What I Believe
I'm wary of any claim that music "heals" in a simple sense. What it does is more interesting: it keeps us company inside difficult states, and that companionship matters enormously.
The felt experience of listening — what a song actually does to you in a particular moment — is real data. I try to honor that alongside the clinical and scientific literature.
I don't write toward resolution. I write toward accuracy. Sometimes that means sitting with something that doesn't have a neat ending, and trusting the reader to do the same.
A Few Turning Points
Classical music filling the house. The Vermont Symphony Orchestra. Waking up on Saturday mornings and tuning the alarm to the radio station he worked at, just to hear his voice. This is where it all began.
A difficult home environment left its mark in ways I wouldn't fully understand until much later. Music was always the exit door — the place where chaos couldn't follow.
Lost both my grandparents — my unconditional people. My son was born the morning after my grandmother's funeral. My grandfather was lucky enough to meet him before he passed. Life and loss arriving together, inseparable. Music became less of an escape and more of a lifeline.
From Vermont, at 30, with a lifetime of listening behind me. A space to write honestly about what music does to the mind, the heart, and the long work of staying well.
Currently on Repeat
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