** You can listen to this Beautiful Eclectic playlist, which I listened to as I wrote this post **
I woke up this morning with music in my head. Between my brain and the sheets a song played over and over. The melody and wordplay dancing around each other. I grabbed my phone, plugged it into the speaker and played the song. The luxury of laying in bed, listening to your dream song, morning under the covers, snuggling dog. A moment of bliss.
Arising, making coffee, jumping on the international google hangout (which I was late to because of timezone mixups). Swimming in the beautiful #globalnow. I remain positive about my audacious decision to blog what I love. Then the suckerpunch comes in my email. A blow from left field. I sit. I take it in.
I think, this is a big raspberry to my experiment. But I made a promise to myself. A commitment to you, whoever is reading, to blog what I love.
I kept thinking about this Grateful Dead Lyric. "Without love in the dream it will never come true." And I put on my Beautiful Eclectic Playlist and decided to write about my love for music.
Music has always been a huge part of my life. I have often regretted my decision to never play an instrument. To not read music. I learned other languages, but I was always intrigued by the notation: notes spread across lines, structured and fluid, a magical language. But a doorway shut. I look at the black notes on the cream paper, ignorant, unable to hear the music. Much like my poetic words on this blog.
It's not just the music that delights me, but the wordplay. Poetry. Metaphor. The dance between meaning, symbolism and expression, dovetailing with rhythm, melody, structure, style. My favorites are fractalic. Diving deeper into the music, a pattern repeating, changing, repeating, shifting. I love a lot of electronic, trance and dance music because of this exploration. Over the summer I was introduced to a classic form of this: the fugue. And no, I'm not talking about space travel fugue state.
I swim within the layers of the fugue. Skimming the waves created by the notes. With electronic music, like the Aphex Twin playing right now, stops interrupt, bring attention, allow a pivot, shift, reach into a possible space and pull back something to experience. I follow a thread, a line, something I see in my mind, willingly as far as it leads. A Wonderland adventure. I lose myself in the movements, savoring the adventure, these possibilities. Structure returns me to the shore, where I am deposited, elated. Moments has passed, but a lifetime, I can return to over and over each time I listen to this song.
I layer my own experiences on the experience of the music. Increasing the personal value, meaning of each piece. These values fermenting, becoming something for my own experience. To taste again and again. And each taste has the original and each revision.
These moments, these experiences, these lifetimes - I experience. Daily. Multiple times Daily. What sweet musical bliss?
Music, let me count the ways I love thee. You take me on mental journeys, to places I dream of, that exist in the possibility of the existence of music. You sooth my heart and soul when I am less than myself. You give me answers to questions. You fill the silence with beauty. And yet, I do not miss you when there is silence. I love that I live in a world with such diverse music available - at my finger tips. From Bach's Fugues to Daft Punk's Get Lucky to Moby's We are Made of Stars, to Steely Dan and Jamiroquoi and The Orb and Earth Wind and Fire and Bill Withers and ELO and George Michael and and and...
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