I’ll be the first to admit that I am ruled by my passions. Here, I mean “passion” not as an emotion but as a noun, a tangible *thing* that demands my attention to the exclusion of most all else. When I get to the critical point in a novel, for example, when I simply MUST know how it all ends, I sacrifice almost everything else (sleep, food, conversation, etc.) to finish it. When I start working on something on the computer, time flies by and I hardly realize how much or how quickly, which is why I routinely get up 30 minutes earlier than I have to, because invariably something engrosses me (be it e-mail, music, a task requiring concentration, etc.), and I hate it when I cannot fully immerse myself in something because there’s something else I have to do.
These things wax and wane, as all passions must. What is critically important to me today will most likely be pushed to the recesses of my mind next week or next month, and I’ll have moved onto a new critically important thing.
But this week, the thing that is occupying my mental energy and free time, is delighting in the rediscovery of a friend’s completely amazing music. I mentioned this a few days ago with the link to the first song he posted on YouTube, but in the days since, he has added more music. Each song feels more personal and more emotionally raw. A couple of them move me to tears. The intimate way in which he has videoed these songs for posting on YouTube makes me feel like he is sitting in my office, playing to me. And I am completely, totally captivated.
Music is something that deeply affects me… it always has. My parents pushed me into piano lessons a couple of years before I was old enough to start in band because others had told them piano lessons helped students do better in band. Through the years, I learned to master (at a very basic level) the piano, the trumpet, and the flute. To this day, I desperately want a French horn and oboe, and wouldn’t mind playing the saxophone. I’d also like to learn a string instrument, possibly a violin but probably the cello. And of course, there’s the guitar.
I mention this because I learned, from my years of pursuing (if only recreationally) music, that the best music *does* touch the soul. I find it difficult to explain this in words to those who do not feel the same, but it’s absolutely true, in my mind, that a few well chosen notes can express more than a litany of words. One of my longtime favorite songs has no words, and while it has a presumably happy title (“The Wedding Song,” by Kenny G), I have always felt the song conveys tremendous loss and grief. At least, it does to me … and that’s the other brilliant thing about music, it speaks differently to different people.
I may listen to a lot of pop-y, sappy, and/or crappy music, by others’ definitions, but the music that I truly love all speaks to me in this way. Some of it is in a foreign language, but even if I didn’t know what the words meant, I would feel the same kind of connection to the music itself. Apart from entertaining songs written to make me laugh, I just have no mental “room” for music that doesn’t have this deeper meaning for me.
This has, of course, gotten me into trouble with people I’ve been close to in the past. They lament my crappy choice in music and force me to listen to music I would likewise describe as crappy, because in my mind, there is no emotion in the music for me. I have no emotional investment in it, and it just sounds awful to my ears.
But back to my latest diversion. The music my friend has been posting on YouTube speaks to me in a way music has not in a very long time. It reminds me of the energy and emotion I felt when I was making music with other musicians, a feeling that could never be described and that exhilarated my soul. It makes me yearn for a time when I had that feeling regularly, and makes me melancholic in the realization that I may never have it again.
There are many of these songs that move me to tears, but my favorite — the one I just cannot get out of my head — is this one, which I’m going to try to embed/share here. Please, listen to Tim’s music and support him in his sharing of more.