Music & Me

Those who know me well will know that I'm a music nut. While I can certainly see the genius and beauty in paintings or photography, I've never been someone that can take 2, 3 or even 4 hours to wander through an art gallery, or someone who can spend 20 minutes looking at a  single painting. I just don't get that--and I'm just not built that way. Again, that doesn't mean I don't respect and admire the genius of the great painters and their work. It just means that my soul is touched by sound, more than it is by vision.

I'm not dogmatic. Buddhism speaks to me the most: I do believe in a higher power, but don't believe whoever he/she/it is, should be labelled as Jesus, Allah, Jehovah, or whatever other term man has invented to differentiate one from the other and to make his god better or more true than another man's. Music is where I feel the divine in humanity.

I used to have very one dimensional taste. U2 and a few other acts like REM and The Eagles used to be about it. Gradually, through friends, and through becoming a bit more open-minded, my tastes broadened. Now, there's classical, there's hip-hop, there's grunge, there's heavier rock like Rage Against the Machine, and there's Bruce....who I got into because my great friend Jenn has a (not so) secret crush on the man.

Most albums have at least one song that gives me goosebumps. At U2 concerts--or any other concert, there are certain songs where I will pull my hood over my head, close my eyes, not interact with anyone and just let the lyrics and chords flow over me.  Usually, those are the songs that have a particular emotional tie, or they are songs that gave me some hope when my depression was at its absolute worst.

When I'm out and about, I've usually got headphones on, and a playlist can send me through the whole gamut of emotions in the space of how ever many songs are on it. I will feel elated, melancholic, emotional, joyful...and on...and on....You get my drift. And yes, there is even a "fabs is pissed off, and needs noise, don't bloody well talk to him now" playlist.

There is a great line in the movie "Amadeus," where Salieri, Mozart's competitor and fictional assassin is close to death, and making what amounts to his final confession to a priest. Salieri describes the first moment he saw and heard Mozart's music, stating that "this was a music I had never heard...filled with such unfulfilled longing. It seemed to me that I was hearing the voice of god."

That is a quote that describes what music does to me....and who could fail to agree, who could fail to feel some kind of emotional tug when they hear a coda as stunning as that in the link that follows:
Music like this demonstrates the power of the divine in us all:

Shakespeare had it dead on when he wrote: "The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils."