Music is a wonderful thing: it is one of those rare – but precious – phenomena in life which seems to exist purely for no reason other than its own intrinsic beauty; like art, poetry, or the Great British Bake Off. It is a rare moment during the day that I am not plugged into headphones: in the shower, while I work, on the way to lectures. My life – like countless others, I’m sure – has an ever-present soundtrack, deftly woven through virtually every aspect of my day, and scored by all the artists I like enough not to skip.

There is no real need for us humans to like music. Our penchant for strings of notes, each one carefully calculated to follow what comes before, is the payment of no evolutionary dues, the satisfaction of no chemical precondition. We talk to communicate; we walk to get places; but perhaps we listen to music simply to feel things. Indeed, despite its apparent superfluity to our human biology, music has managed to find a way of climbing inside us and never leaving. It is staging a peaceful protest against the wearying, monotonous assaults of daily life. Music is the fortress we build for our mind, to protect it from the bad things on the outside.

But sometimes the fortress isn’t strong enough: cracks appear and the structure begins to crumble. The CD is scratched, the track jumps and the soundtrack is corrupted. All of a sudden, a foreign voice is scoring your life, and you don’t know how to assert yourself and tell it no.

The Voice drowns out all your accomplishments with the sound of your failures. It sings sweetly in your ear – songs comparing you to your neighbour, to your sibling, or just to undiluted, unattainable perfection – until the melody fills your ears and makes you forget all the other songs you knew before. You repeat the lyrics listlessly back – I am not good enough; I don’t belong here – because it is infinitely easier than writing your own song.

The Voice tells you that you don’t look right – you have too much of this bit, not enough of that bit, and that other bit is just plain wrong. It tells you to show more of one thing, less of another, and to do everything possible to hide something else. It draws angry red circles around everything it deems ‘flaws’, and simply shouts louder every time you try to answer back.

The Voice watches what you eat so you don’t have to, but it watches too closely and loses all perspective. It tells you to avoid this food – that you don’t deserve that food, that perhaps you shouldn’t eat at all – but you follow its advice, because you assume that, because The Voice is inside your head, you must have given it keys at some point.

It waves its baton and you play along blindly, because the orchestra always does as the conductor instructs: you think what The Voice tells you to think, even though, deep down, part of you knows it is out of key; you do what it tells you to do, even when this puts you out of time with the rest of the band; you fear what it tells you to fear, even if it is as painfully simple as leaving the house.

Soon enough, you start to believe this alien voice inside your head – a groaning chorus of society, the media and personal insecurities – and you adopt its monotonous ostinato as your own. You convince yourself that you, and you alone, are composing this poisonous accompaniment – because it is true and necessary – and you forget all about the starring role played by The Voice.

When this happens, finding the stop button can seem like an impossible task. Sometimes, in your blindness, you accidentally hit ‘volume up’, and everything seems immeasurably worse. Sometimes, you simply mute it, fully aware that the same toxic refrain is still there, lurking in the background, waiting spitefully for you to slip up and give it the limelight once again.

In times like these, the only solution is to take matters into your own hands and compose your own soundtrack. You start with the basics – the bass line, which lays the foundation for all kinds of rich harmonies over the top. And then – perhaps by yourself, but more likely with the help and support of those you trust enough to share the closing credits with – you create a texture so gloriously luscious and full that The Voice is left simply to knock dumbly and never be heard. Note by note, beat by beat, you rebuild your musical fortress, in the hopes that it will be stronger and more secure than it was before.