“Do you not care at all how I feel?”

“Frankly no.”

End of conversation.

I have recently read a book that really resonated with me.  The storyteller is “Music” and just as “Death” tells the story of the Book Thief, “Music” certainly touched something in me.  The idea is that, as you are born, “Music” decides how much talent you receive and enters you as you emerge from the womb.  “I am a brilliant colour in the rainbow of human talents from which you choose.  Later when a someone special lifts the curtain, you feel that chosen talent stirring inside you, a bursting passion to sing, party, dance the tango or simply bang on drums.”  Talent is a piece of God’s shadow and under that shadow human stories intersect. Talent weaves from generation to generation and the shadow stretches.  Truth is light.  Lies are shadows.  Music is both. From the Jewish Midrash, there comes the teaching that,  “With each child, the world begins anew.”

How the flatting of the third finger on a guitar can change a major chord to a minor chord – happy to sad.  In a heartbeat, the mood is changed.  The ambiance and feeling is altered, but not necessarily destroyed, sometimes enhanced and more beautiful.  In comparing our life paths, it is necessary to anticipate these melancholy times and ride with the tide until the change of the chord.

In musical terms a suspended forth moves back to the third.  A diminished chord slides to its tonic.  Dissonance to consonance.  Dissonance is a total lack of harmony among musical notes, and a lack of agreement or harmony between people or things.  Disparity. Do we ride the tide until consonance is achieved?  Consonance, the combination of notes in harmony with each other or in agreement or compatibility between opinions and actions.

Music forms the base of most of our memories.  It transports you back to your childhood, possibly in utero, that is if you were lucky enough to hear the joy so early, to the singing of nursery rhymes, to teenage years, first loves, concerts, ballets, weddings, funerals. It is the most cathartic form of joy and healing we have on offer.  Whether you find this joy in the gift of others, play your own version of honky tonk or dance to your own rhythm, it is a wonderful form of release and correlates to your life path.

I was one of the fortunate.  The tide swept into my soul at birth.  I hear it, I feel it, I play it, I dance it.  It is beautiful.  Like so many, I perhaps let the shadows overwhelm me.  Let there be more light.  Let me be free to my music.

The god of music quotes “I have said that music allows for quick creation, but it is nothing compared with what you humans can destroy in a single conversation.”

“Frankly no.”  Two words.