My Experience With Music: The Power of Music
Music is a bit weird when you think about it. How come a mere sound that's produced by strings being plucked, or even air holds such an impact? It's just vibrations of particles, right? And the fact that these mere "vibrations" of infinitesimally small particles can move a person, make them feel a ton of emotions, make them happy or make them cry is just beautiful. It can not only teleport you from one place to another but it can make feel a part of something more, something grand. Something beautiful.
The soft sound of a flute can make you feel at ease. It can teleport your mind to that soothing place where the cool breeze rolls around, where there is that relaxing mist amongst the trees. A place of solitude where no one except you dwells. This soft sound makes appreciate life, it makes you forget all your sorrows. It takes you to the calm core of this thing that we call life. On the other hand, the harsh, rock-y sound of a guitar pumps you up. It instills this fearlessness that has no bounds. While listening to a guitar riff, you feel like you can take whatever the world throws at you. You can take on the forces of evil in a bloody battle and emerge victorious. That's metal for you.
I have kept the examples to a guitar and a flute but this does not mean that these are the only instruments that are able to inspire all kinds of these feelings in people. But the thing all of the instruments and their music has in common is their ability to make you lose yourself. They show you the world's beauty, and sometimes it's darkness too. You don't remain yourself, you change into this unknown individual. Someone to whom these "vibrations" mean something. And sometimes afterwards, if you think about the time you had while listening to some amazing piece of music, you'd laugh in disbelief that you had become someone you had no idea exists within you.
Music means different things to different people. It can be a means of rejuvenation, of regeneration, of happiness and health. It can be a means of death and destruction. It can be a symbol of tyranny and oppression. It can be used to rise against tyrannical governments and rulers.
It can make you feel like you're driving down an endless desert at mindnumbing speeds. It can make you feel like you are relaxing on some beach in the Caribbean, resting in a hammock. It can make you feel the desert heat, it can make you feel the Siberian cold.
To be honest I can go on and on about what kind of power music possesses. But I think you have got the idea. Many people brush this thing off, saying that it is just an exaggeration. The truth is, if a record can't make you feel even a bit of emotion, it means one of two things:
- It is a bad record, which is pretty common
- You aren't paying attention, which is very common.
Music can be as meaningful as everything to you, and it can be as meaningless as everything to the next guy. Everybody has an opinion, you can't blame them for it.
What I am trying to say is that, if you listen to any great piece of music closely you can feel it's beauty. Just listen to anything by Mozart or Beethoven. At times, you may find yourself moved to tears. It's one of the great things about music. It's immune to the deadly grasp of time. To find yourself moved to tears by something some guy composed two hundred years ago is just amazing in it's own right.
Great post. I often muse on the way sound works and marvel at how it travels through various mediums to reach our ears and become interpretations for our brain to decode. Crazy thoughts!