Without Music

Music is like magic.

It makes little sense to me how a song can sometimes just hit me without my being able to properly justify why it makes me feel quite so. There are too many examples to count of that in music.

We hear the right song, we can’t get it out of our heads. We hear a certain song, it changes our mood. We hear another song, moods change again. Music can sway our emotions, can sway our thoughts. It can anchor our memories. Then at a later playing take captive those dormant, forgotten, back of your mind thoughts.

And make you remember some loose fragment of a time.

An uplifting song can get you through the down times. A sad one can remind you that you’re not the first to feel sadness, and ease the pain of going at the world alone. Upbeat songs can move crowds. National anthems can move nations.

And some songs just make you feel like you’re floating on air, and make you wonder at life. Those are my favorites. Songs that just make you sink out of the troubles of the moment and make you want to think on what it’s all about really. Why are we all here? What experiences are there waiting for us across the horizon? Is the world all probability and chance or is it perchance partly driven by fate? And in the end maybe even think on how there even is an “I” to think on these things in the first place.

And when I get into those types of moods, that stray thought from a 19th Century mind long since passed still lingers and rings as true now as it did when first it was spoken.

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”

Life is no mistake.