Thursday, March 04, 2004

In love with music

I know I was going to finish the last blog, but chose to abandon it due to inspirational issues.

So: Music.

Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.
--Victor Hugo

My best friends in life are people I've never met. In some cases, I have no clue what my best friends look like. However, I know that the way that Adam Duritz talks to me about women, or the way that Ella Fitzgerald always makes me smile in awe and respect, those are things that best friends can do. Music never fails to surprise me. It grabs me by my deepest nerves and pulls me out of my body where I can dance on the exterior, bouncing off of the air molecules and clinging to sound waves that echo and boom off the walls of my room.
I love the lightness I feel when I sing, the lightness that came with "St. James Infirmary" after KOB's homily about loss and his brother. I know that the feelings I have when I sing are the closest I'll ever get to love or the Divine in my entire life. I recognize these things, and I close my eyes in ecstasy to know that I will always have this safety net to fall back into.
I spent my days as a kid drawing pictures of Philcinema, the number 1 band in the world in my mind. I would sing their songs out loud all the time, the lead singer Billy Ryland looking like a mix of Dogma-era Ben Affleck, Dave Matthews, and with prominent black mutton chops going down to his cheekbones, his black goatee shaved before it could develop into a moustache. Billy Ryland is the epitome of Rock and Roll, and his image would be burned into my mind for the idea of the musician for my entire childhood.
As I've matured in life and musical tastes, I find the blues and jazz artists of the Harlem Renaissance to be the prophets of America. I love to fall into the beautiful chords of Five For Fighting's "100 Years" and REM's "Nightswimming." I can't help but cringe in sheer joy and pleasure when I hear that guitar bend in the fifteenth or sixteenth frets, pulling my spirit up with the E string.
Nothing understands me like music does. Music provides the answers to questions that we can never truly comprehend, but music is the reassuring shoulder rub that seems to say "Don't mind all that."
There is an anonymous quote that has always filled me with contentment and reassurance, and if only the writer would have been attributed with it, I could find the legend of this person and find the music in them.

"Most of us go to our grave with our music still inside of us."

I don't ever want to lose the music stored within me, burned into my subconscious like a picture on a projection television of the fifties. To end, I would like to give one final quote from Hans Christian Andersen, the poet and short story author.

"Where words fail, music speaks."

Never let go of the music inside of you. Let it sound off of the hills of the world, echoing in magnificence across the globe. Much love.

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