Over the past decade I had gradually allowed pragmatism to overthrow those things in my life that replenished my soul and kept me in touch with my deeper values. I feel that's part of the burden taken on by choosing to pursue advanced education and join the 'professional' flock. However, I am willing to concede that I also became a bit disenchanted with what pop music was offering me as the two-thousands progressed.
When I was a teenager and into my early twenties, music was an enduring passion. Several hours a day were spent under the sweeping hands of my choral conductor, scanning sheet music and noting her slight grimace when I slid a note for the sake of good sport. Although I was young and naive and idealistic, every song I sang fed my soul like nothing else could. In the hardest of times music soothed me, in the greatest joys it extolled my achievements. Music was one of my deepest loves, and I had committed to it since my earliest days as a small child, nestled in the corner with my father's record player and Beatles 45's.
I gave that all up for textbooks and theories and exams. I stored away
Medusa, So, Violator, Rubber Soul for the responsibilities of academics. There was no more time for capricious hours alone with the headphones. Gone were the days of cloistering in my room sitting on the hardwood floor facing the stereo speakers and escaping the conventional.
Just under a year ago, something in me broke away from the system. Some ghost in the machine began to combat my stoic compliance with business as usual. I cannot say what happened initially-as the protagonist in my beloved novel
High Fidelity would say;
"what came first, the music or the misery?" Perhaps it was the sudden thrust of loss and change in my life that lead me back to that space I'd not existed in for ten years. Perhaps it was the music that awoke the hibernating muse of my past. Perhaps it matters not how or why something changed, but it did, and not in the transient manner I suspected at first.
Suddenly music re-entered my life with fervor. Something that once was lost was found. Although, at the time, my life seemed to be crumbling to dust in many ways, I had music--I had solace. Part of my mind/heart/soul that had been dormant re-invigorated and spurred me on through an autumn of loss, fear, pain and victory. Not only did I love again-I loved more profoundly than ever before. I hungered for the moment to leave my daily work to shut the car door, slide a disk into the player and regain my center as I made my way home. During the day the music echoed in my mind. I even dreamed of music-I heard it crystal clear through the darkness. I could feel the sounds bubbling within my chest until I could escape to an empty room and sing at the top of my now attenuated lungs. Although the voice that came from me was sometimes weak and unrefined, I remembered that once I could fill a room with ringing. I knew someday I would regain my strength.
Today I celebrate the power that music has had for me every day. Never before in my life has it moved me so. Now I spend giddy evenings returning to the once beloved haunts of the local record shop, flipping through the sonic sweets and squealing when a treasure susses out from the milieu. You can find me half-dancing in my car or my jaw unhinged as I belt out to today's aural selection. You'll hear the music leaking from the rafters and floorboards at home in the night.
Or perhaps you can find me in the crowd at a concert, my eyes welling with tears, my mouth moving along with the music and my body swaying in spiritual sychronicity. If you find me there, and if you feel as I do, tap my shoulder and let us experience the fathomage of sounds that speak to us like no other messages can. That is my perfection-my place where I am safe, brave and enlightened.
Thank you to all who share the music with me, and to those who make it-it is a boundless gift.
~~~c. Paige 2012~~
To quote one of my favorite poets (okay, my favorite):
ReplyDelete“It is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts”
(T. S. Eliot, “The Dry Salvages”)
In a crucial way, one essential element of music (and being a listener of music) is that it awakens, reawakens, and continuously invigorates our minds so that we find our own “sound”—whether it’s moving to the beat of our own drum or finding our own writing voice, and so forth.
When we start engaging in the things that open us up to ourselves, we stop engaging fully with the world’s potential, with other people’s potential, and with our own potential.
All art stimulates in some way, but music’s effect has a powerful grip over the mind, body, and heart in that it also draws together fans (at concerts, for instants) in ways that other forms of art do not. We dance, sing along, clap to the beat (or we do if we are the right kind of people worthy to be attending such shows). In this way, the connotations of music are as important as the art itself.
Like you, Paige, I shoved aside the days of pleasure-listening (and reading and writing!) for the academic life. Eleven years later, I reemerged out of a dark time desperate for something as stimulating and just MEMORABLE as the songs played on the living room record player.
I think it goes without saying as to what happened next (at least for anyone on this blog) but, well, long story short, I ended up here.
So, to get back to your entry: you’re welcome. And thank you. :-)