music

Some days lately are bookended with music. Music seems to bookend my best days, the days where I lay my head down with the kind of peace that comes from rightness and knowledge of where I am in time, in life, in home and heart. My best days are the days that I’m aware of the new breath my life has, a slower breath where accomplishments are of the soul and not the pocketbook or prospectus. On these days I begin and end my days with music. I usually find the world to have both too many and too few words. Too many words of surface, of speaking, or telling, and too few words of listening, of honesty, of substance and connection. I think sometimes after a day filled with conversation, a day filled with events and speaking and places to go, I end the day feeling empty because I always crave a deeper connection. I crave a connection with the words that were not spoken that lie behind the words that either were or weren’t. Words are too easily held back. Words are too easily used to attack. Despite my love for them words often feel inadequate. Music fills the chasm.

I grew up playing music, I matured listening to it, and I use it for every creative pursuit I try. Now more than any other I use it for the creative pursuit that is my life. In the early early morning, hours before the sun rises, after I put my son down for his last episode at night I slip downstairs, plug in my headphones and pick through notes of old songs and new, remembering how to play not just with my fingers but the ache within me that reaches past common words towards the truth I find so slippery to pursue. At the end of my days I bathe in water and listen to music, usually allowing myself the luxury of two songs. I put the headphones in, turn the music up far too loud for my ears, and drift back into that space that somehow lies within me but is only accessed through deep connection and emotion. I wonder at how music carries me into it so quickly. Especially when I try so hard to find it with words spoken, words shared, words tried.