Thursday, January 29, 2009

Blind Without It

It is truly amazing how colorful music can make your life.  Often I've wondered if somehow in those "what if" games, I could manage being blind or deaf?  Without question, when you listen to music, it would be blind.  A great song makes you want to live, it makes you feel poetic, it makes you question the deeper meaning of life and it gives you perspective.  Humorous lyrics, non sequitur rhymes and just the whole system of creation is just so awesome.  Movies can be made or broken by the use of lyrics.  Commercials, TV, even websites and emails are all colored by the use of music.  The wealthy have always privileged the use of music.  The ways of the educated were spattered by training in music, music theory and by exposure to music like the symphony or opera.  

When you put a piece of plastic given to you as a friend for your birthday, you don't know if it will have any meaning, any depth or anything that will emotionally draw you in but once the first down stroke of a chord hits the ears, you know that there is no reason you should have questioned it at all.

It takes me out of this world to listen to music.  You simply turn up the volume, close your eyes and visualize the world.  This beautiful world that we get to see everyday.  The sun, the moon, the stars, the sunsets and clouds and reflections in water and leaves changing colors.  But when we want to visualize these things without the soundtrack in life, it doesn't seem worth it.  

Put down your book, your child, your guitar, your cup of coffee, your camera, your shovel, your hands, your heart, your eyes and just breathe in and listen.  The caramel voice of that sweet singer, the rough lyrics of that lifetime musician...they all color our lives in un-mistakable ways that cannot be duplicated no matter what.