Monday, October 19, 2009

The Hills Weren't Alive for Nothing


Did you ever listen to a song, I mean really listen. Not just rock out to the beat, not just sway to light melodies, but listen. Take in the words, the meaning. Put yourself in that writers life. Envision your own muse and completely understand. A musical epiphany.

There are songs for all occasions sure, you have those blood-curdling moments when you are angry or frustrated and you need to vent. You could belt out "You Oughta Know" in your car, windows down, hair flowing as wildly as your mood. The typical woman scorned brought to life through music. Or maybe you like it heavy thrashing drums, writhing and beating into your very core.

Songs of remembrance, clichéd and over used through time, but some unknown, just for you and that particular person gone. Moved away, changed or passed. Doesn't matter. They touched your life and are no longer a part of it, and you find some attribute of some song to remember them. Immortalize that memory with a few measures of music. A lifetime stored in an 8 count.

I sometimes picture my life as a musical. Not those campy cabarets involving happy endings and sporadic musical numbers full of fluff. Music portraying the real parts of life. What would that sound like? The love, the loss? The life, the death? Every person their own theme song in my life, every step rhythmically choreographed.

In some ways we are all set to music, we all have those got-to songs that comfort or soothe us like an old friend. The ones you listen to on repeat, over and over again while you ponder what it is going on in your life at that particular moment. As if that song transcends you into another place and you are able to see things in a different light, or perhaps a new shadow casts upon it.

People take great care in choosing a song for their wedding, but this isn't the first time you have chosen your music so meaningful. You have been compiling your greatest hits your entire life. A song to commemorate your biggest milestones, your hardest failures. There is poetic justice in all of it.

The cheating song, the break-up. Songs to get you amped up for a night on the town, or ones that remind you of simpler times. Songs for our soldiers and our children. For the greatest love you couldn't have to the ones that just touched a small part of your heart. Hell there's even a song for the lunch lady.

Whether we realize or not, music and those gifted enough to bring it to us touches our lives in every way. It subconsciously seeps into your psyche. You sing along to song after song, not realizing how your brain can manifest and hold so much information. Lyric after lyric, note after note. A modern day sonnet, more powerful and ever-reaching than anything Shakespeare could have imagined.

I preface all of this because of how affected I am to it all. I hear a song and I am brought to certain places. I remember different people and sometimes what feels like a different life. I hear others and I have feelings of longing. To know and feel that I was that powerful a force in someone's life to have been immortalized in song. Sometimes moved to tears.

Or to find the irony in it all like Dave Matthews, "Funny the way it is, when you think about it, somebody's broken heart becomes your favorite song" To listen, to sing along mindlessly, never once thinking about the anguish behind some of the most popular and most played songs that have ever existed.

I have music on my blog for a reason. Some may find it distracting, but its mood affected. Its set at random to emulate the varying moods I have. The loss, the love, the longing. There is irony and comedy. Tragedy and bliss. All with a few strokes of a guitar strings and a talented voice saying sometimes what I can't. More over it makes you think. Remember. Empower you to have your own musical epiphanies.

The hills weren't alive with the sound of music for nothing....


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