Life With Music

I was listening to some of my favorite music this morning. After a few tunes had come and gone I realized something curious about the music. There have always been certain songs that seemed to speak to me, either simply through the sound or through the lyrics or both. Just a few years ago some of these songs very much stood out, enabling my feelings of futility and hopelessness at that time. The strange thing is that this morning I heard a couple of those same songs but now they resonate with hope and life and goodness.

Music has been part of my life for a very long time. It began when I was 12 or 13 years old and my parents gave me a hand held AM/FM transistor radio. This would have been around 1966 to 1967. By the early 60's and due to the increased prevalence of television, music had begun to dominate AM radio formats. By the mid 60's the number of AM radio stations had exploded and since FM radio offered a better technology than AM more and more stations were beginning to broadcast within the FM band.

So at the time young me acquired an AM/FM radio, broadcast music was really taking hold. I found many listening choices even here in the hinterland of the country, the back sticks of east central Iowa. Music was as much of an enhancement to my auditory sense as pleasant scents were to smell or good flavors were to taste. Music enhanced my moods and my thinking. I developed quite an appreciation for most kinds of music. Over time differing aspects of my life began to influence the type of music I listened to. And of course, since part of my life held a concealed darkness, heavy metal became the musical genre I most listened to. I was drawn to its doom and gloom lyrics and sound, but at the same time I was able to distinguish the craftsmanship put into the better composed pieces, and this greatly added to my appreciation of well composed music.

My love of music never led to an ability to create any of it myself, but while I might not always recognize art when I hear it I know what is good. Today there are very few genres that I turn away from. For me, music is life.