We all have that one thing in our life that means more to us than anything else. For some, it's a material possession they refuse to part with for one reason or another; for others it's a person that's done unimaginable wonders to their life.
For me, it's music. My life and in what I deem important, as much stock as I put into people, culinary arts, visual art, and the numerous other things I do, music ranks the highest. Creating, performing, and listening to. Where I fall short in the ability to make the connection of mind -> hand -> paper = art, I can take chords, transpose, raise or lower them a minor, major, 5th, 3rd, or 7th, or ANYTHING, and just start pounding out emotion and create beauty.
Music is the only way I can look at complex mathematical equations and not shy away, it's the only way I can think logically and still be able to have a flowing thought process. As a friend once said, music is truly the only 2-Dimensional art, but in my mind it transcends dimensional and linear thinking.
Music is subjective. What we consider art is just noise to another person is just pretentious sell-outs trying to be something they're not to another. I accept this. My tastes in music are generally eclectic, and I can appreciate the spectrum of music laid in front of me. I try to discover new music every day, a new artist, some song that's phenomenal and astounding to hear.
Lately, I've been trying to shed part of myself that are pure poison to hold onto, parts of me I regret to have held onto so tightly for so long, parts that ought to have been released before they turned into a festering pustule under my skin. Through this, I've gone back to my musical roots in an attempt to reach nostalgia for a time when I didn't feel the weight of the world on my shoulders and when I wasn't so exposed to the toxicity of humanity. I've been listening to Enya, CSNY, Led Zeppelin, and Sarah McLaughlin to an almost obsessive degree, and I can't even begin to find the words to describe how refreshing it is.
To evoke nostalgia or release emotion, some people use smells, others food, others sight, others use material relics. I use sound. I listen to Enya's Watermark and CSNY's Deja Vu albums and I immediately smell the freshness of South Lake Tahoe pine trees, the constant crisp air stinging my nostrils as I inhale and taste life, the fields swaying in the wind, the grass stroking my cheeks as I roll and accept Mother Earth's embrace to the tune of a woodpecker. Lake Tahoe sits in the valley below the mountainside in pristine aquamarine, snowcaps reflecting as a reminder of nature untouched.
Actually, it's rather sad. Unless something hugely emotional happened, the most prominent memories of my childhood involve music. I first learned of Mount Diablo and remember going down one of Camino's many long and winding roads while listening to CSNY's "Teach Your Children," and talking with my dad about the song's meaning.
Enough on the nostalgia.
As I was saying prior to my trip down memory lane, music is the easiest way for self-expression, for myself, at least. If I can't create the music to match my mood, my expansive knowledge of music enables me to find the perfect song. No, I can't write song lyrics. My poetry sucks. Quips I blat onto the piano are short, short-lived, and beautiful. Mostly, they're in Ab or Eb, or just C Maj because I'm lame and tardo like that. Eb is my favourite chord, because of the range of emotion it holds. Most of them generally more melancholic and dark, but breathtakingly beautiful.
Piano, violin, cello, acoustic guitar, tenor saxophone, didgeridoo, bass flute, sitar, and French horn. In my opinion, the most beautiful instruments I've ever heard when used correctly.
Music provides an audience with the proper setting or emotion for what they're about to view, be it on screen or on stage. Horror movies would hardly be half as scary without a D Min chord striking, and discordant harmonics struck by the violinists to make you jump in your seat. Romance movies would be bland without the dramatic, joyous swells when the lovers embrace. You get where I'm going.
Music was intended to teach and evoke emotion from us, to help us tell stories to pass traditions on to our progeny and to keep a culture alive. While the importance of music most certainly seems lost with this generation, and those who created mainly for creation and a message being considered more and more oldies with every passing day, there are still those few needles in the haystack.
Music is the most important thing in my life.
Were I to lose my hearing, my life would end as I know it.
It's not melodramatic, it's truth.
