Music Is What Feelings Sound Like

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

~Berthold Auerbach (1812-1882)

I’ve often wondered at the correlation between our lives and music. Music is not just entertainment value, it truly transcends our souls and the music we love, (it differs to us all) can elevate our lives, calm us, transport us to happiness or nirvana or chill us out when we need it the most.

For decades music to me was on the same level as books. Unnecessary!!

At school, pre-teens, music classes literally scared me to death.

I took trumpet lessons because the other music classes where taken by a behemoth of a man called Mr. Scott. A somewhat famous piano playing aged hulk of a man, who strode the halls of our educational establishment with ferocity. He taught all instruments available to the under budgeted music department not with pride, but with anger. He grumbled, he growled and he scared the majority of us all.

He carried a large piece of dowel which he stated to parents was to keep us in time with the music. We knew it was just to keep us in line with his temperament.

An artist on the piano himself, he taught our generation the flute recorder. No wonder he was angry. One of the most worthless instruments available on earth I think.

I can’t name one famous recorder blower to save myself.

Music in those days had to be purchased on vinyl records. LP’s and singles, cassettes weren’t even popular yet. But it made no difference, my parents would not cover the cost and I was living in a world where 20 cents was monthly allowance. An LP would have taken me 40 years to afford at that rate.

Perhaps it’s this fear of expense that makes music memorable, even at $1.29 a song its not cheap stuff.

The first piece of music that sticks in my memory was not until 1990. Sinead O’Connor’s  “Nothing compares to you”, was haunting and set a rhythm for the remainder of my life.

Music it would seem, has become a mile marker in my life. It designates the stops and starts, the accidents, the good times and the bad.

When I fall for a song , I fall hard. A bit like my relationships.

I’ll play the song incessantly. Some times on the stereo by my bed. Mostly on my iPod, until eventually the magic of the tune wears out.

Somehow, as I look back now, my life has its own soundtrack. If my life should be made into a movie, I can tell you know the songs that will feature.

My iPod is full of memories. Sindead O’Connor sang her song at the end of a four year relationship I had in Brisbane and reminds me of when my house was robbed. Gino Vanelli and his “Wild Horses” was a happy time of my life when I too was taking riding lessons,,”The Verve”, “Cyndi Lauper” and  Enya all joined me for great phases of my career and right now “David Guetta”(feat Makeba) and his “If We Ever”, lyrics, just understand my love predicament (written about below) so well, that I can have tears welling in my eyes on the way to work, just listening to it.

I've been fragile for a long time

A big old hole inside my heart

And I was searching through the valley

Stumbled on love in the dark

Was afraid to try, but afraid to never know

What it feels like to be loved.

I’m actually not one for lyrics even. Ask me about most of my favorite songs and its not the words that connect with me so much as the beat or the fluidity of the music. Words confuse me and my ears aren’t fast enough to understand rap. I prefer to get lost in Mike Oldfields’ “Tubular Bells” or Pachelbels’ Canon (Canon in D major)   by Johann Sebastian Bach or  Ennio  Moriccone‘s soundtrack of “The Mission”, all for the freedom it gives my soul, rather than work hard at trying to listen to words.

Good music fills our ears with joy, great music sets our souls free among the clouds.

I believe, as some one else stated, ,” Music is what feelings sound like”.

In the right mood I can be set free by a good tune. It as if  I am  sitting in business Class seat on Gulf Air and sinking back into its depth on take off. I’ve taught myself to pass out with the G-forces, and I love the feeling. It comes second only to drugs being pumped up your arm by an anethitist in hospital. That complete release.

We need that in this world.

Music is valuable to us. I don’t feel bad about paying $1.29 for a song on iTunes. It’s the cheapest form of stimulant around and perfectly legal.

I just wish they could take a list of songs that filled your life with memories and burn a disc for us and send it to us on our birthday as the soundtrack to our lives.

So of the correlation of music and our lives, I really do believe that “music is what feelings sound like”.

Some days good feelings, bad feelings, chillout , lounge of heavy metal. We need it all. Some days we can handle everything, other days we can not. We are some times irritated by music or the type of it, just as we are with feelings.

I am in tune with my emotions and feelings,  I love hard and all encompassing and understand that which makes me tick, because my heart is filled with love for all, then that is what gives my life a tendency toward the music I enjoy.

Some people would like it and me, some people could not stand the music that is my life. 

But that’s the beauty of music. 

It is to each of us, as individual as we are to the world.

The soundtrack to my life is as unique as me.

And thankfully my iPod is filled full of it.