bring me back to the day

saying "i like music" is about like saying "i like to not die" or "i like good food". i know i am not alone in feeling that music is more than just notes on a page or a melody drifting out the car window. music is something that gets inside, that brings emotions up, that calms you down. it's the universal language that's so extremely personal. to hear a favorite song with a person you love, brings you even closer together. you share a part of your soul in that song. countless songs about love, death, God, beauty, pain...sometimes they're one and the same. for five years i studied music in college; taught it, sang it, played it, felt it, was tested in it, and sometimes failed it. i tried not to resent it. i questioned why i ever majored in music. i graduated, taught for a year, and through a complicated course of events haven't taught it since. it was almost like i forgot about this part of me, this old friend who had seen me through so many years. i fell in love with a man, which is like music only even more significant. even though i wasn't really spending much time with music, it threaded its way through my relationship with my then boyfriend - now husband, and we have not only "our song" but a whole soundtrack to our life together. thank God.
a few months ago, a friend from college asked me to sing at her wedding in november. then i got asked to help lead music at a retirement home one night a month. slowly, all of a sudden, i was back, spending time with my music. just like old friends there was a little catching up to do, but it felt so right, so natural, to be hanging out with music again. i had a voice lesson and never felt so happy about singing. i am un-learning most of what i learned in college, including the feeling that my grades rest on my ability to sing (which they did). i led some elderly people in singing hymns and felt that tiny burning in my stomach, the one i have when i'm doing something i was born to do. the one i got in the summer of 2007. the one i got in the spring of 2006. the one i got when saying my wedding vows. i've come back to music, almost full circle.
when i started picking out songs on the piano at age 6, i never imagined the love affair that would ensue and last 21 years - and counting. there's a song called "the song remembers when", and it reverberates around in my brain all the time now. it's so true of me. and probably you. the other night i went to the bluebird and listened to music, and what happened is what so often happens. the music made me write:

"i never write in silence. i am singing inside. music provides the inspiration to read, to write, to make love, to live my life. praying, singing, cleaning house, they are all made better when the song finds me. the song finds me and it remembers me, and it reminds me of everything i was, am, and will be."

Zephaniah 3:17
The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing."

Colours of sound
Scales and beauty
Audio scenery
Electric love and
Rhythmic symmetry
Written in memory
Beautifully crafted scenery
- lauryn hill, "music"