Music

Music is destined to be my first and longest lasting love. When everything else in my life has faded away, when my friends have moved on, when I'm frail and the lights have gone dim, music will speak to me still, will still move me and heal me, will provide shelter and understanding and a place for my spirit to rest. I can't even describe what it does to me, how the opening notes of Miles Davis' "So What" can raise such intense emotion in me, cause me to anticipate every single note even though I memorized every one of them long ago. It's a high that can't be replicated, and never loses its immediacy and power. Music, to me, is an eternally captured moment, a mood or an emotion set on tape permanently so that we can relive it time and again. There are moments in my life that are set to music, to the song that was playing when they occurred or the song I found after the fact that expressed what i was feeling at the time. Individual songs become mile markers in my life that allow me to track my journeys and my thoughts. Certain albums are evocative of periods in my life. I can't listen to Sublime's "40 oz. to Freedom" without thinking about high school. I can't listen to Billie Holiday without my first serious relationship running through my head. There are so many more than that. My life is annotated with the music and work of the many artists that I've been privileged to hear. When I listen to music I can't help but feel that I'm sharing in something, something bigger than myself, that I'm participating in a larger collaborative dialog between the artist and the audience. Like all art it gives me the privilege of leaving myself and partaking in someone else's vision for a time. For one vast, intimate moment we can lose ourselves in song and the rest of the world is left dimly behind us.