I am grateful once again for the incredible healing power of music. How is it that I forget this–constantly? This morning, I listened to a CD on my way to work. Usually I listen to an audiobook, but I finished the most recent one and I can’t get a new one until the first of the month. So, I decided to alternate between music and listening to an audiobook on Buddhist teachings so as to refresh myself about all the areas I need to be working on. Today, music won–I blasted the CD the whole way to work, replaying a song called, “Hold On, Change Is Coming” over and over again so I could let the lyrics settle into my bones. The song talks about being in the midst of a struggle and learning to hold on, have faith, be strong, soldier on, because change is coming. I sang at the top of my lungs as best I could over the lump of tears that caused my voice to come out more croak than harmony. It wasn’t my finest performance, but then I wasn’t performing. I was encouraging myself through song, something I did a lot of in my earlier life. I realize the extent to which I’ve let that go.
I used to pour myself into my music. It was an avenue for me to express some of the pain and sorrows I faced in my life as well as to celebrate the simple things that I spend time writing about in this blog. My music, like my garden (as I wrote about a few months back), ceased to be a focal point in my life the busier I got with the business of living. My most prolific songwriting happened during my college years, and it was during those pivotal years that I decided not to pursue a musical career. At the time it wasn’t a driving passion in my life so I sort of turned from music to more practical academic pursuits rather than live the life of a starving artist. My mother (God rest her soul) discouraged me from pursuing a creative course of study in college (I wanted to be a fiction writer/novelist) and encouraged me to pursue a field “you can get a job in.” I studied animal science and agricultural education and the rest, as they say, is history. Singing in the car on both ends of my commute today reminded me of the importance of music in my life. I’m not sure I’ll ever really get back to it like I did when I was young, but it’s at least worth thinking about.
I am grateful for the reminder. I really do need to be singing much more often. I’ve little doubt but that it releases some of those endorphins they say flow into our systems when we exercise or do other enjoyable things. For me there’s nothing quite like the power I feel sometimes when I close my eyes and sing, or when I rest my cheek against my guitar as I play, reveling in both the sound and the thrumming vibration of the strings and wood. It is very calming and comforting–two things I could use a lot more of these days. Music has the power to transport me from where I am to a totally different realm of consciousness. I am grateful for the sound, grateful for the capacity to hear the different tones, to have a voice that allows me to speak and sing and whisper. I am grateful for the dexterity of hands and fingers that allows me to play my guitar and the aptitude to be able to put things together and have them magically transform into a song. I am deeply grateful for these things. But even if I sang off key or had no voice at all and could not manage to play any instrument with any skill whatsoever, I would still be grateful for the gift of music to the world.
I may never again be a prolific songwriter as I once was and it’s likely that I will not perform before hundreds of people (perhaps not even dozens), though playing for an appreciative audience is a wonderful feeling. But I can still play for myself, an audience of one who is also very appreciative. Perhaps I’ll begin again tonight.
