Music 2

Music is the basis of life. It really is, if you can't express something in words you'll often find it expressed in music.
One of my conductors favorite phrases is "Nature doesn't make straight lines, man does." he often says this when he want's dynamic contrast or contour added to the piece. And the more I think about it it's true. The first straight line was made by man. I mean, man needs a ruler (how we make those straight I don't know) to make a straight line. the straight line is really a curious thing. It's unnatural. If you were to go to a National Park and just look around you wouldn't see even one straight line. the cliffs aren't straight, arches aren't straight, even bugs and animals aren't straight. NOTHING IS STRAIGHT, nothing natural anyway. so why do we try to make anything straight? I don't actually understand this. yet we do. what an interesting phenomenon.

"Talketh Not, Plucketh Not" "The canvas of music is silence" two very closely related quotations. one is from my school orchestra teacher one from my other conductor. essentially the message is, "silence is golden." When you're listening in a concert you always have a cough or two, a door shutting, simple small noises, but they are ten times louder. Why? Because silence is truly the canvas of music. As I sat listening to a concert on Saturday I closed my eyes and was able to picture some of the things going on. the pictures were real to me because they started in a moment of pure silence. In my opinion silence is beautiful in it's own way. To be alone with one's thoughts is not truly possible until one is in complete silence. These days we plug our ears with technology and we are almost never in true silence. Silence is the canvas for many things besides music. it's the canvas for great ideas and true, complete thought. Today we rush around, not taking the time to sit in silence and contemplate the beauty in silence, and an unrushed life.

"Ah music, a magic beyond all we do here" -Albus Dumbledore true and complete music is a magic all in itself. We always rush ourselves into things,and we don't realize that the magic of painting a picture in our brains is a magic. it is, it is! can I not stress enough that music it beauty, love, passion, thought, intelligence, feeling, all bundled into one. if that's not magic I don't know what is.

In my life, there is nothing so amazing and beautiful as the music I make myself, or the music I hear in music. As I grow older I appreciate music more and more. Next time you go to a concert I challenge you too close your eyes, and (don't fall asleep) create a picture in your mind, it doesn't have to be perfect it's your interpretation of the music that surrounds you. Or, go to your instrument, sit down and play a piece, it doesn't have to be fast, in fact the slower ones are the one's that are easier to envision, and listen to the tone, the melding of the notes, and then close your eyes and imagine what's going on, make your own story.