Each morning between 7:15 and 7:30, I roll over and hit snooze on my blaring alarm clock. Sleep is a good thing, especially in college, and goodness knows that I don't ever want to get up; I just want to keep sleeping the day away. But the first thing I hear every morning--yes, even before I hear the coffee pot gargling away in the next room--is the music coming from my oh-so-beloved iPod that is attached to my alarm clock. Normally it shuffles through my embarrassing array of music: a mixture of old preteen favorites, Broadway chart toppers, movie soundtracks, and instrumental classics. But while some of these songs are no longer my own personal #1 hits, each represents a significant part of my past as well as the present. How would my life be different if music hadn't played such a prominent role? What if I had a life without music?
Music has always been my outlet. When I was young, I learned to play the piano after watching my sister at her very first lesson. A short time later, I sought out the harp after telling my family that I could play a song better than another little girl. Not my proudest moment, but I am very thankful for it. And why stop at two instruments? Come middle school, I chose to start learning the trumpet and not long after, I picked up the French horn. And to top it all off, I have always loved singing. While it may seem like I am being boastful, that is not my intent. Rather, I recently realized how much music has impacted my life. It has always been there, whether it was when I sat at home writing and recording a new song for piano or when I played in a pitch-dark chapel with tears streaming down my face and onto the beautiful ivory keys. Music, no matter the instrument on which it is played, has a magnificent ability to express the deepest of emotions.
The times when I find myself frustrated with a situation, mad at someone for no apparent reason, or when I genuinely don't know how to interact with others, are the times when I turn to music. I seek to release my frustration, stress, anger, and confusion through the music that flows out of my fingers and onto the keys. I've come to realize that if I didn't have music as my outlet in certain situations such as these, I might have hurt those people closest to me because of my fowl attitude. Now, not all the times I play music are sad. There have been beautiful moments in my life in which I ran to the piano to express the joy and happiness that was pulsating through my veins. Other moments are when I find a new favorite song and listen to it on repeat forever and a day. What if these moments were nonexistent? What if life didn't have music?
Finally, music has an amazing ability to not only be heard, but also felt. Songs are intended to speak to the audience through lyrics, harmonies, orchestrations, and countless other methods. They are also intended to make you think; to leave you guessing or wondering the meaning of a piece. One of my favorite experiences with music is to find something that actually moves me: goosebumps rippling across my skin as dissonance between notes takes place, beautiful harmonies that bring about a sense of peace, or a climactic chord that all but makes me cry with joy at the end of a piece. These are the moments that I look for in music. What do you look for in music? Is it the lyrics, the rhythm, the instruments? Why do you like music? What if you didn't have a way of experiencing the beauty of music, whether that be hearing it, feeling it, writing it, or playing it? Let's not take the beauty of music for grated; it truly is a blessing in disguise.
