When the Music Fades…
These past few years have been brutal. So much loss, so much heartbreak. Life got hard along the way and something in me died. If you know me at all, you will know the importance music has played in my life, but suddenly, the music was gone. I even stopped listening to it in my car for a while unless I had a long drive alone ahead of me. The silence has been deafening, profound. I hear a clock ticking where I would never have before, but the silence amplifies it.
It was a gradual shift and was a while before I realised it had even happened. My world had become silent and lonely. I barely left the house. It was a sudden realization that the music had stopped. It stopped a while ago with nothing to fill the void it left behind. Gone were the familiar tunes that could pull me out of a funk or give me perspective. Gone were the melodies that evoked a smile; sense of peace; thoughtfulness or just pure enjoyment of the music. They evoked too many memories, things I would rather forget or was not quite ready to face. I just didn’t have energy to even select music to put on or look for new tunes to listen to.
I am definitely a different beast when I have music in my life than when I don’t. Without it, I shrink from the world around me, lose purpose and motivation. My creativity dries up and I become a shadow of who I really am. The color fades into dull greys. The beat, the rhythm of my life is gone. Music is important to me – it motivates, instructs, calms, teaches.
Then out of the blue, tunes began appearing on my feed as I mindlessly scrolled. I don’t know why or how but suddenly I was discovering Soul and Country and Rock and even modern classical from artists I had never heard of before. I discovered the genius of Tommee Profitt. There was a spark, a remembrance, a longing for me. I spent time looking, discovering, listening. I created new playlists with tunes that had no memories or history attached to them.
And I changed. I started singing out loud again, smiling, humming. Phrases in songs sparked my imagination, words began to flow again. One thing I realized was that I have always had a music buddy, someone to share the music with and who shares with me. I had lost that along the way. I miss that but also know that music is important for me to function and thrive in a healthy way. I am better in a world with melodies swirling around than in a world of silence. I have hope, and inspiration, and ideas that the silence never gave me.