Feeling Human...

Even though I'm currently working on my master's degree in psychology, I find that music is the central and driving force in my life. I guess it's always been like that, though. At one point, I thought I wanted to play music always. I loved it like nothing else. But then it became a chore and wasn't fun anymore. When that happened, I knew I had to walk away from it. Playing an instrument should always be enjoyable on some level. Opening the case should never make you cringe or want to storm away in frustration. When it comes to that, it's gone too far.

While I stopped playing, I never stopped listening. In fact, I feel as though I developed those parts of my musical talents in place of my performance abilities. I began putting effort in to truly hearing music. All of the instruments. All of the voices. All of the movement. All of the change and variation. All of the diversity of sound and tonality and quality. All of the thought and emotion struggling to be conveyed. It's amazing what you can hear when you make these things the centerpieces of your listening experience. I can do it now without trying. I just close my eyes and it flows. I can almost see it. I've heard of people who can see sound and, particularly, music. I often envy those individuals.

Obviously, hearing plays the key role in experiencing music; however, I find it relatively easy to feel music as well. The pulse of the beat can be felt in the very pit of my stomach. Certain combinations of notes or the utterance of a certain combination of words may raise the hair on my arms or the back of my neck. I sometimes find myself struggling to breathe as I enjoy a live performance or fully immerse myself in a good album through a pair of high quality headphones. The smells and tastes I sense in the air at live shows are unique to such situations. I always drive home afterward, wondering how it is that I've come to have the scent of hundreds of different people I've never met upon me... some sort of collective aroma consisting of colognes and aftershaves and perfumes and clove cigarettes and marijuana and a dozen different kinds of beer and wine and other assorted alcohols. It's the smell of an evening shared between strangers that are somehow friends simultaneously. Drawn together from all over by a mutual love of a band and their music. I just wish that the sight of a band upon a stage as they perform, as I become excited by the movement of the individuals before me, as they rock and sway and pull forth pure art from their instruments... I wish that affected me as much as all of these other things. But I can close my eyes, leave the work to all of my other senses, and have the most enjoyable experiences of my life. People always ask that question "If you HAD to choose, would you rather go blind or deaf?" For me, it's never been any sort of contest.