Music

Just listened to music on youtube for a few hours. I have to say, I am grateful for music.

I feel like I am blossoming late in this area and finally finding the music that speaks to me, which is very odd when I think about it.

It's odd because my Dad was a musician. How has this taken me till now? I often think of him, guitar in hand, sitting on that horrible orange floral couch in the living room. I don't remember him playing anything I heard on the radio to and from school. It was all original work, his own compositions or songs from the bands he had been in, I suppose.

He was an avid concert-hopper in college, and still went to concerts when I was little, apparently. My sister even went to her first concert with him. And yet, I grew up listening mostly to my mother's music, followed by my brother's. I don't know how this happened.

My mother is a music-lover, too. Singing and plunking on the piano, wishing she'd had lessons instead of being self-taught. There is something painful to not being able to speak with notes.

I don't know how I was so unaware of what was going on with music when I was little. I feel like the only musical exposure I had was from the guitar-playing man on the couch, the pop and country stations my bus drivers listened to, the voice of my mother in church, and the music class Ms. Cheney taught at my elementary school--xylophones and vocal warm-up exercises, as I remember it. And a couple of Beatles songs, haha!

And here I am in my twenties, finding music that actually matters to me. Me, the girl who has actually cried, not from frustration, but grief, that these hands do not have a way to get the music out from my insides. That I have no instrument anymore. I did play flute once, but it was all so rote and I never got to the point where I could compose, which is want I wanted more than anything. Maybe if I had persisted it would have been different. I've wanted strings, though, not woodwind.

I remember sitting at our horribly out of tune piano and hearing, very clearly, a few bars that were from me, that felt right, and having no idea how to get them translated into actual music. Trying to pick it out one note at a time... Just the satisfaction of hearing the melodies in my mind in the real world, one time! Has anybody else felt this? If only I could sing the way an instrument does! It's still in there, buried deep.

And finally, there is art that matters to me and speaks on a level I cannot articulate. It is an awakening. There's plenty of the stuff that merely entertains or fills the silence, but I have actually found music that deeply moves me, and it's out there, and I found it! And it dulls the ache of the voicelessness. It is a balm. It fills me up.

Some of the songs from tonight:

I Still Ain't Over You (aucoustic), Augustana
Ember and Ash, Augustana
Shot in the Dark, Augustana
Steal Your Heart, Augustana
Half of My Heart, John Mayer
Friends, Lovers, or Nothing, John Mayer
Paper Doll, John Mayer
Perfectly Lonely, John Mayer
Dreaming with a Broken Heart, John Mayer
Slow Dancing in a Burning Room, John Mayer
Dear John, Taylor Swift

Begin Again, Taylor Swift

(Post Script: I do see the theme there. I'm aware of it, and I'm moving through it.)