Music is….

Music is…..

 

Music is possibly a part of the air I breath. (without it my spirit withers and the rhythm of my heart stalls.)

 It is without question such an integral part of who I am that if and when it’s not present in my life a significant part of who I am is missing. My relationship with music is as telling as is my relationship with my faith. As much as I know there is a force far more powerful than anything I am or that I understand, I also know the sonic impact music has on my spirit and my human physiologically. 

I now know today after having experienced a time when music was missing from my life that without music I had no idea where to let my feelings rest, I had no backdrop for deciphering them.

 (Allow me to say that for me music is not just a therapy, but without its cathartic benefits I would be a certain broken hot mess.

Today I am more aware of this. Today I own it.

Today I am giving music the respect of an honorable place in my life that it always should have held. It is not a 9 statement when I write there was a time when I was so numb music was the only thing that could break through and touch something meaningful inside me. There were times when certain songs were the only things that could cut me enough to make me bleed… feelings.

There came a times when music was my lifeline, music is was what kept me from becoming the island alone that I often felt myself drifting towards. 

And yet….

Once upon a time I gave up nearly all music in my life for someone else’s comfort, never understanding at the time I was putting my own emotional and spiritual well-being at jeopardy. Today I take two significant things away in hindsight; my relationship with music, and my relationship with people. 

It became painfully obvious to me to have to admit that my sans music period was ME willingly letting go of something that touches me more deeply than anything else. That something though I apparently didn’t value enough. Not then. 

It was not stolen away from me, I gave it up. I gave it up little by little, over time, trying to minimize someone else’s discomfort. Never understanding that it wasn’t even ever abouinsteadt simple discomfort, but instead it was about an ever growing resentment. A resentment over music being the only thing that touches particular feelings inside me.

Quietly and covertly that became seen and felt as a threat. 

 

As a young child who loved music I had the good fortune of belonging to a family who made music part of daily life. In some way, some form, music was the soundtrack to growing up in my family. Singing with my family and friends was my first stage and my first audience. I loved the Saturday Night Jams, which seemed like every weekend. I was young, maybe four, so how trustworthy my memory is for accuracy will be made up for in sentimentality. As a child I never knew anything different than understanding that making music was important as the listening to music is. I may not have understood beyond the surface why this is, but as much as I trusted a measurement of time I also trusted this to be true. 

 

Figuratively and literally, (my play on words are intentional) when music and it’s time signatures are missing from my life I lose place of myself. I catch myself smiling at the associations that make so much sense today. I didn’t know for the longest time that for me there is a deeper value to every note played out in my life. 

First years of knowing the score, then long empty years when I began to shift the importance of everything that I had learned. I’d stopped honoring the significance of lyrics and instrumentation and I began to lose a major part of myself. I had let music in any format cease to be part of my life. I had adopted an attitude that if I couldn’t participate in music like I always had, and how I wanted to, I just wouldn’t.

“That’ll show them!” 

 Little by little the major discord from participating in music came to be my truth and my resolution was that it wasn’t worth the waves it caused.

Except….music is powerfully ever reaching.

 In the final analysis, there was NOT a single thing that this resolved. Not for anyone. 

 

Amazingly though music’s powerful reach touched me again and again. It kept touching the vulnerable parts of who I am, Ironically for me it was a beautiful Cello solo suite with a deep mourning being played across the strings that suddenly woke me up very early one morning. I recognized my personal association with the empty shadows that the cello was filling. Piano chords picked up gently the melody the cello was weeping softly, and my soul finally understood. 

I had been foolish. 

 

Life and it’s uncertainties that surround us can be a tough nut to crack. Feelings are often the toughest nuts with some of the hardest shells to crack. Finding the right tools for the right job my dad always said was a sign of a true craftsman. Consequently I do believe in finding the right tools to navigate life and to crack the nuts it drops at my feet, 

Music is…….  a tool, a therapy, a study, a science, a philosophy, and a practice. I dare say even it’s a prescription.  

 I trust losing myself in the rhythm and cadence of music will dim the significance of anything else and let me find my way to be honestly in touch with my emotions.

Experience has taught me that music is how I first let go, give myself emotional space, and then find a way to come back to navigate life’s stresses and problems.

Yes, admittedly letting go maybe only for a few moments, but those few minutes of music are a form of therapy that I can repeat as often as needed. Those few minutes, or even hours, escaping into music gives me the emotional space between action and reaction that serves me well. 

But it’s only been in recent years have I recognized that it was music that was the missing element, it was music that was the void I couldn’t fill any other way.

Music had been an important part of my life. I should have known it made perfect sense as I grew older that music should remain a significant part of my life. Music is a significant form of communication for me and letting go of music was in effect me no longer communicating. 

 

As a child at first singing was something that I did because I was heard. I knew it pleased my parents and won the approval of the family & friends.

As I grew older I recognized too that I loved to sing because it made me feel comfortable in my skin, and more at peace. (though at that age those were not words I had to express my meaning.)

 As time passed and I went into the tumultuous teens songs that spoke to me became my way of dealing with life’s joy and pain, with life’s problems and emotions. 

 Music, whether listening to or singing was a therapy for me.

  I love the way I feel when I am listening to, or singing a favorite tune. I love the way my imagination moves easily from one visual to another. I depend especially on the way the tempos fill my mind and move through my spirit until I am only feeling only the music.

It’s a healthy kind of time-out that I allow myself to simply feel whatever emotion the music is expressing in a visceral, but objective way. In that objective way I can let go of my own emotions, making it possible to feel only the expression of the music, it leaves an emotional space that’s both liberating and cathartic. 

Once I let myself fall into the rhythm of music I quickly feel a closer connection with the independent me, my strong self, the mysterious and even childish me. 

Music gives way to my imagination and how I wish to see myself, the way I want to be. 

Music is what gives me the freedom to be whoever I want to be, to say whatever I want to say, and to go wherever I want to go. 

Music is how I deal with what’s so painful on it’s too raw it’s difficult to cope. 

Music softens the worries of my everyday life. 

Music gives me the emotional space to fosters a deep analysis of the day. Good or bad. 

Music tugs at my heartstrings when I miss someone. Music fills my heart.

Music fills voids and heals wounds

 

Prescription 101- 

Tune out the world. Turn on the music. Turn it up loud, 

Lose myself in the music until my mood becomes adjusted accordingly. 

Repeat as necessary. 

 

Music will always remain my personal therapy. At this point in my life I am adamant that I will never relinquish it again. Should I feel it being threatened in any fashion an alarm will signal  (possibly a Cow Bell) and this time I will listen. This time I won’t let music go. Kowing this time that for me to expect to remain emotionally and spiritually whole music is part of the air I am required to breathe. 

 

 

Music is……. 

King King is my current #1 form of escape ~

https://www.youtube.com/embed/BBTCybkuNVM“>