The Sound of Life

I had all these great ideas for what I wanted write this week, and then I got sidetracked by music.  Marilyn Monroe singing Happy Birthday. EPMD. Zap Mama. Antibalas.

Music is universal.  Even if genre isn’t.

My heart beats with rhythm.  Take a moment and listen to your inner beat.  I’ll wait.  Let me mark your place.

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Of all the forces in the world, music is the most visceral to me.  Even if you can’t hear, you can feel the bass drop. No one can escape the boom.  And we all drop on the one, one foot in front of the other.

I heard the most beautiful sound I’ve ever experienced recently.  It was a chorus of 15 voices, and it was the sound of life.  It was feeling and color and love and torment.  It was a remote island and a valley of brick.  It was sunrise and a mountain.  It was the purest thing I’ve yet witnessed.

It touched me with a soft caress, and it brought peace.
It was a beacon of light.
It was mother, father, daughter, son.
A living organism.

Only in time is music.  It exists in a breath, a wave crashing and water burbling.  It’s a moment.  Isn’t that what makes a great song?  A series of perfectly interconnected moments.

I exist in time.  Maybe, since I’m just bundles of energy down beneath my matter, I’m a wave.

A sound.

A great musician once asked me, “what if white noise is harmonic resolution for me?”  What he meant was, what if music resolved to utter static instead of a pretty chord, and that was the most natural way for music to flow.

I rest easier knowing there is chaos in the universe.
Shaking things up makes waves.
And music is just a bunch of waves.
So am I.

You really should listen to some Zap Mama.  It’s good for you.

Here’s Zap Mama with The Roots: