Love #2

I will readily admit that I am a music addict and have been since my earliest days. I grew up having it play in the background from morning until night, a constant accompaniment to the events of our lives. A meal without music was dead air. Sleep refused to come without the soothing tones. It was an integral part of each waking moment and many times part of my dreams.

I had a dream once as a teenager. I was in a dungeon. The walls were lined with moss and mold and dripped water in a constant pattern. Drip. Drip. Drip. I stood in line with several prisoners, or feet shackled together as we marched forward to the rhythm of dripping water, a black-hooded axeman leading the way. Suddenly one of the people in line started whistling and singing. "Here's a little song I wrote, might wanna sing it note for note, don't worry . . . be happy. In every life we have some trouble, when you worry you make it double, don't worry . . . be happy." Everybody in the line started harmonizing the different parts and the big axeman with his deep voice would say the line, "Don't worry, be happy now." I woke up laughing, hearing the end of the song trailing off on the radio.

Mom taught me to appreciate the classics. When we'd have music appreciation days in elementary and middle school and would do reports on composers the other kids would choose metallica and Pat Benatar. I brought Tchaikovsky and Rachmoninoff and strangely nobody teased me about it. They were interested in hearing more.

Nowadays my tastes run from the water music of Smetana's Moldau to the haunting sound of Laura Fabian's Dream Within from the Final Fantasy soundtrack. I love classical, country, pop, rock, alternative, new age, electronica, dance music, and the list goes on and on.

Music has created the sountrack of my life. It has been there through the highest pinnacles and the deepest sorrows, and it's not just the listening of it I enjoy, but also the playing. I've tinkered with the piano, got a scholarship with the flute, tapped into my celtic roots with the pennywhistle, and picked up bits and pieces of the saxaphone, clarinet, recorder, and harmonica. Music flows through my veins and sometimes I even write it down. At times when I couldn't process what I was feeling with the written word, music did it for me, whether in a piece I composed myself or one that touched my heart.

Music is the language of the soul.