Music is Life

Music -- It governs our lives. Seriously, can anyone go throughout a day without listening to or thinking of some form of music? What is it that makes us spend hundreds of dollars to carry every song we own around with us 24/7? Is it to be part of the 'in' crowd, with iPod in pocket and earbuds dangling around shoulderS? Why do we spend hundreds of dollars to put a nice stereo system in our car? It's crazy how accessible music is to us, and how attached we are to it.

Everything in and about life has a rhythm that can be monitored and predicted. The sun and moon rise and set. The temperature rises and falls. Leaves change colors, go dormant, and begin to grow again. Gardens sprout, blossom, produce, and wither away. The world is woven and intertwined into syncopated yet synchronous rhythms and beats that hold together. Enter: Human Chaos. Let's just face it... we humans are some of the most unpredictable creatures around. Half the time you have to decrypt the conversations you have just to understand what the heck the other person was talking about. Some of us sleep during the day and are awake all night, some of us don't sleep at all, some of us skip meals one day and eat them all the next, and some of us don't know what we're going to do the next day. It is often very difficult nowadays for humans with their everchanging and unpredictable tempos to find common ground and settle into one "tune." That's where music makes such a big difference.

Music always has a structure to it, and we humans love structure and organization, as long as we don't have to do it ourselves, of course. There is always a consistent beat that can be followed and traced. Whereas humans rely on sight more than any other sense, music diverts the attention of our mind to the signals coming from our ears, allowing us to close our eyes and turn off the rest of the world. When life is chaotic like a bad chord played at the wrong time, music provides comfort and relief by laying a pattern and giving us something consistent to pay attention to for once.

Music is art. There's just no other way to put it. Music has the rhyme and depth of poetry, and the intruge and captivity of a painted piece, all blended into one, laced with finesce and mastery. Music is is the main vehicle of emotion that allows us to share what we feel with another in a far more personal sense than simply talking. We can't speak the words of our heart, much less write them with as much ease as we desire to when our heart is full. That is why we make music, that we might have something to put our whole heart into that all may understand.

Think of the hymns you sing in a religious setting compared to the scriptures you recite and the sermons you hear. There is something unique about putting music to words of praise. Singing gives the heart a chance to express what it has to say instead of the mind. Music fuses the left-brained analysts with the right-brained artists, satisfying the personalities of both, therefore proving universal in its nature.

Take a look at any native culture anywhere in the world. What is one thing that is common about every single one of them? Music! We are so attached to music because it is the heart's desire to break forth in song. It gives us something to put our emotion into. If you look at the Chinese, the Arabic, the Indians, the Europeans, the Africans, the Native Americans, and any other culture, they all have unique songs brought to life by very different musical instruments. Whether the instrument be a wooden log that is beaten or a complex harp that is strummed, each is loved and enjoyed by its respective culture. Even now, various instruments from long ago are being used in even the most contemporary music. There is simply no way of escaping the fact that music is one of the foundations upon which our lives our based. If it suddenly disappeared, many things would crumble.

Many great and powerful rulers through out the world were fond of music and the musicians that produced it and the effect it has since made on society. Think of the Hallelujiah Chorus. What a magnificent work. I doubt that anyone could listen to that and not have chills go up and down their spine. It was created to capture the magnificence of Jesus Christ and rightly does so. Turn to John Phillip Sousa. Can any American not feel even a tinge of patriotism while listening to "The Stars and Stripes Forever"? It is because music has an infinite capacity to hold and carry emotion from one person to another that it is loved and craved by everyone. Without music, we would be chaotic zombies having very limited ways to express ourselves and no definite tempo to our lives. Music is one of the reasons for which we breathe and live, for the breaths we take and each day we live is done with beat and tempo. Music is what keeps the world in time with itself and provides for common ground among any of its inhabitans. However, life isn't just music... music is life. Life without music is nothing more than a loud silence.