I felt it only a selective few times in my life. After the lights go down and the music starts playing. As the main act makes their grand entrance to the stage, the feeling lingers. Anticipation grows as I start to wonder which direction they are going to pop out of –ceiling, floor, or even sky. When the musicians finally meet with the spotlight at center stage, and the crowd starts to roar, I am fully engulfed with a sensation that you can only find in one place: the concert of one of your favorite artists.

This feeling is a mixture of magic and togetherness. You’ve listened to all the songs and memorized all the words (while even writing some of the lyrics on your body). You’ve spent a small fortune on concert tickets and purchased all of the tour merchandise you could afford, changing into the t-shirt you just bought and throwing the shirt you came in into your bag. You are surrounded by other people who all share the same taste in music as you, and as a result you make a couple of new friends along the way. You are prepared for a musical getaway.

Personally, I have felt this feeling at my very first concert, Miley Cyrus’ Best of Both Worlds Tour, as the lights dimmed in the Prudential Center and Miley Cyrus walked out onto the stage. I also felt it at the very last concert I have attended, Panic! at the Disco’s The Death of a Bachelor Tour, when Brendan Urie turned the microphone towards the crowd and the entire audience sang every lyric of “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” back to him. I even felt it at Ed Sheeran’s Plus Tour when he politely told the crowd at Madison Square Garden to shut up so he could sing a part of his song “Give Me Love” without a mic.

The best part about this feeling is that it gives you a concert high that stays with you long after the event is over and the lights in the arena turn back on.

Or at least that is how it should be.

As you may already know by now, an act of terrorism has left 23 dead, at least 120 injured, and hundreds of thousands of people from around the world affected after Ariana Grande’s concert in Manchester on Monday, May 22nd. A bomb exploded in the arena immediately following the conclusion of the concert. The victims of this terrible act of hate ranged everywhere from a 50 year old mother of three, to an 8 year old little girl.

Manchester, as well as the rest of the world, still mourns for those we lost in this nightmare of an attack. Ariana Grande just recently posted onto twitter with her reaction to the incident by stating that she is willing to do anything in her power to help the people of Manchester, including returning back to the city and holding a benefit concert to raise money for the families that lost a loved one. By far the most empowering remarks she left leave a message that we must sing louder and reminds us that “music is meant to heal us, to bring us together, to make us happy.”

Grande is absolutely correct.

After the mourning is over and the respect to the victims and their families has been made, the only real solution to this ongoing sadness is to turn to what it was initially centered around: music.

Music may have been the reason that hundreds of people gathered together at the Manchester arena on the night of May 22, 2017, but evil is what caused this event. It is not music’s fault that many Manchester families had to say goodbye to their loved ones this week, but rather pure evil. In fact, there is not better time to turn to music than now. Music brings people together, and lifts their spirits. If there is one thing a group of people can share, it is a song.

In addition to sharing a song with your neighbor, you can donate to the Manchester Evening News, who is working alongside the British Red Cross to raise money for the victims families. You can also sign the city of Manchester’s book of condolences to pay respect to the lives that were lost. After all efforts that can be made to ensure that nothing like this occurs ever again, we can only hope that the lives of the victims are carried to a safer place where they can no longer be harmed, and that music will never be associated with evil again.