Music is my life. That may sound pretty boring, and on paper, it looks kind of boring to me too. However, once you start to look at the way music impacts on your life in different, and frequently, unnoticed ways, actually, life would be pretty empty without music.
Now, things would be a little over the top, perhaps, if everything we did had its own film score or soundtrack, as in a movie, but just think how your day pans out and where music plays a part.
For me, it's all day long and I am thankful for that beyond measure. My alarm clock tone is one of a few carefully selected and uplifting songs to help ease the pain of hauling my butt out of bed on a lovely grey British spring day...and it goes on from there,
Listening to music is seldom a passive experience. You often hear new things each time you listen to a song. A lovely comment from a choir member recently ran along these lines:
"When I listen to a song now, I'm not just listening the tune and words, I am hearing the harmonies around it...I listen to the bass part and the drums, and marvel at how it all goes together to make the song!"
As a music educator that makes me smile deep down in my heart. There is so much going on in music that you only have to slightly open your ears to hear and appreciate.
Then there's sharing the passion. For me, it's with my kids at school, with my wife and family, with colleagues in all manner of music ensembles and with my lovely singers in Vocalese. Something happens when group music making is going on. There is a spirit that moves so invisibly, yet so there. Indefinable and perhaps, to some, a bit difficult to let themselves into, but definitely there
Whether you actively take part in music or appreciate it from outside of the wireless receiver or record player, music is life. Can you imagine life without it?
