Music

All my life, I have had a very strong emotional response to music. There are some classical pieces I can't put on while driving, because I can't hear them without wanting to stop, close my eyes and listen. I get goosebumps all down my arms, and my eyes flood with tears. (This can be embarassing. I once went to a Black Watch concert with a friend when I lived in the city, and had to keep wiping my eyes - with Scottish heritage from both of my birth parents, this doesn't surprise. We have a bagpiper who comes to the field down the road to practise, and each time he does, there will be a few of us, standing a bit apart from each other, silent in the dark, listening reverently.)

This powerful reaction to music, is a gift from God that I cherish. I know that there are people who don't have this - I've had friends for whom music never rises above the level of "nice." They can take it or leave it - go for a month without using their cd player.

I find this amazing. I need music. It feeds my artistic creativity. It allows me to believe in the beauty of the human spirit, when doubts assail me. Music can carry me when I am stumbling and tripping over the reality of what people are capable of doing to each other.

There have been many times in my life when the only way I have been able to feel my Creator, was through music opening the route in to where I live, behind my defenses. Music can blast through the obstacles of disquiet and skepticism.

I have the strongest reaction to classical, but I love all music. I'm impatient with musical snobbery - it feels like another way to create those false categories of "us" and "them."

There have been periods in my life when the only real pleasure I've had, has been music. People will test and disappoint us, but people can be a conduit for our Higher Power through music. I can recall a very dark period of my life, when I was living in a basement apartment in a major city to which I'd recently moved. I knew no-one there, (this was before Al-Anon) and the loneliness was overwhelming. All that kept me going, some long sleepless nights, was music - it was my connection to humanity. That apartment was a recipe for depression - new, but dark and gloomy. I hated it, I hated the city, I hated myself...some nights, I'd lie in bed with my headphones on, feeling so hopeless at the start of a well-loved piece of classical, and by the last chords, I would be calmed, restored, and finally able to sleep.

Music is yet another aspect of life for which I am humbly grateful.