Sweet Music

I’ve spent the last few days rekindling my love of music. I spent all of last summer acquiring new songs as my friends, particularly my best friend, began introducing me to new singers and bands I’d never even heard of. I soaked it in, playing things over and over again until they became a part of me. I attended concerts where I didn’t know a single song that was played. I began to fall in love with that feeling of discovering something new.

When my best friend left to spend the year in China, I stopped listening. Every song reminded me of his absence from my life. It was too bittersweet to bear. I still listened to things of course. I can’t drive without the radio on or do monotonous chores without something playing in the background, but that’s all I allowed music to be – background noise. I wasn’t appreciating it for what it was the way I had been all summer. I didn’t feel as though I could allow it to exist without summer, without him. It was our connection.

My mom had bought me an Ipod car adaptor for Christmas, but I let it sit on my shelf until a few days ago. When I finally took it down and began using it, I wasn’t expecting for it to mean anything more than commercial-less music. I wasn’t expecting for every song that began to play to remind me of who I was. I wasn’t expecting to fall in love again.

But I did, and I’m so glad that I did. Yesterday, with no work to attend to, I decided to go for a drive. I just drove aimlessly for hours, listening to the songs I had spent all summer living my life to. I let the outside world dance with the melodies. I watched as the leaves fell in tempo and people laughed along with the lyrics. I came across an open field, and as the sunlight suddenly burst upon it from behind the clouds, the song I was listening to hit its highest peak, welcoming the glory of its perfection. I pulled over to the side of the road and cried.

When I got home, I had an email waiting for me from my best friend. He told me a story about driving along a road in a taxi with a monk he met along his travels. As they drove, an ambient song came on the radio, a song that he described as “the best and most peaceful song in the world.” It went on and on and he told me that it was in that moment that he had reached enlightenment.

I smiled to think that we had unknowingly shared such a moment. He was the one who taught me, after all, how to really hear music, how to let it seep into your mind and heart and soul, how to let it consume you. All summer we danced to those moments of enlightenment, those highest peaks. All summer we danced in their freedom.

When I awoke this morning, I put on my music as I showered and dressed, I listened to it on the car ride to work, I snuck my headphones on during work when things got slow. I spent the day reveling in every note, every syllable. I allowed myself to feel the art and expression behind it all. I allowed myself to feel free. I allowed myself to see my life as the long song that it is, building and building and building towards its highest peak. For now, I can do nothing, but sing along.