I can say with full confidence now that I am truly in love with the concept of music. It has changed my life. From being in a band or listening to it, learning about it, or being involved around it, it has molded me into a better version of myself. I truly believe that our connection to music can feel like a connection to people. If we treat music as if it was a real person, it leads us to a deeper understanding of the content of the music, and a better understanding of who we are. I don’t mean this in a parasocial way, I mean really listen to music like it is someone you love and you will fall in love with it.
There are emotions we never want to acknowledge or think about, and music allows us to find comfort within our minds as we can hold onto a note and hang onto it until it reaches the end of the song. For me, sorting through harmonies in my head is a type of pattern that brings me immense comfort. Trying to follow along with a rhythm or a new melodic line is so relieving to me. I am the type of person to hear a resolution at the end of a phrase and feel immense comfort from it. Music for me is visual; it comes in a form of patterns, shapes, and colors. Sometimes it forces me to experience or lose all emotion. Getting to know music is like putting in the time to get to know a real person. If you really start to fall in love with music, start listening to it and appreciate all of its qualities. You’ll notice yourself missing it when it’s gone and suddenly remembering it years after. Some of my first memories are rooted in the music that was on as they happened; some of my memories I only remembered because of a song. Music to me is like the relationship on TV that you always see or the first love you never forget.
Music has given me bonds I wouldn’t have been able to acknowledge without its presence. Some of the most important moments of my life even have their own soundtracks. Music has given me an introverted way to build connections with people. I have fallen in and out of love through music. I have lost family, grown, and made new family through music. And while music isn’t necessarily a direct player in this, the way that music lives through memory is truly special. I can listen to songs I fell in love with and feel all of those emotions like they are still all there. Music has given me vivid memories, internal peace, and a connection to so many more people. It has taught me how to love.
In order to truly listen to music, you have to sit down and acknowledge that it is like it is a living, breathing person. There are certain details that you only realize once you really get interested in the whole listening thing, and that sounds funny but in reality there will be a day where studying music transforms itself into something magical. The depth of music becomes more known to us the more we deeply fall in love with it. There are certain melodies that give me butterflies and give me a drive to want to make everything around me better — music is contagious in this way. It is truly the one thing in my life that will never stop fascinating me. I always feel so privileged to be in the position I’m in, studying music and getting to talk about it. It’s like cheesing over a crush for me. I just want to acknowledge how much it means to me, but words will never really cut it.
My music-loving friends, band mates, and collaborators have taught me how to love myself from the perspective of the art we produce or love together. The world means so much more to me because of the existence of music. It has taught me how to feel love, how to send love, and most importantly, how to LET myself be loved; and I will love it until I can’t anymore. Till death do us part, music.
