An Analysis

Music is cyclical.  Setting aside the compositional aspects of repeating rhythms and themes which conclude within the arch of the song, we are left with the design of it all.  It invokes our emotions and is made from them.  Did the earliest people whistle while they worked?  Did their mothers sing them to sleep before language?  When one of their own died, did they wail out the grief, or was it a melodic recitation of their life and the pain the hole their existence leaves behind?  These are some interesting questions, but I will be looking at music, as I interpret its effects on myself, without actual music.  Seeing as how I have no musical talent to speak of (I sing in the key of off), I will be using words, which are still a powerful aspect of the process sometimes.

At a broad view, music is designed to entertain and communicate.  What and how it does this is as varried as the aspects of the human condition. But there are certain aspects that are consistent, which ply on our feelings.  When I listen to music, it draws out feelings that I have.  Brings them to the light without diluting them.  When I'm angry, songs that have an alien quality to them, something which sets aside humanity is a commonality.  The best ones also use a human voice to counterpoint this, and the lyrics will cut through the pseudo-psychic bullshit to whats pricking at my anger.  It pierces the shell and pulls out the pain, bringing it to the fore of my consciousness.  The pain envelops me and drowns everything in a white-hot rage.  It burns cold and bright, leaving a core of logic and calm, and I can move through it without fear.   

I have also found, that in depression, music can accentuate it to a point.  The sadness that I feel is nothing when compared to the simple joy of being alive to hear this wonderfully apt song.  My hurting is real, so real that I relish the chance to feel even that.  I am able to grab some fucking happiness out of the black, and push back the fear and melancholy with the knowledge that just feeling, even torment, is more powerful than anything.  I find euphoria within it, and I'm just happy to know I can feel.

Love songs.  To write about love songs, is like drawing stick figures for the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, or seeing a sunset through purple glass.  It is inadequate in every way, though I am compelled.  Even the ones about unrequited love bring a swelling of the heart, and an insane happiness with them.  I wish ever so fervently that I could write something that could move someone as much as music can move me.  I dream of love in terms of love songs, and sonnets, beautiful and whole, their composition a masterwork of longing and fantasies.  It isn't that music creates these flights of feeling, but they are always there, nestled in the deeps, just waiting the right touch to let them free.  I will forever quest for the proper string of characters to convey who I am, and though my quest may be fruitless, I will never quit.