The biggest thing I have learned from music
In “The Art of Eating Spaghetti,” Russel Baker’s discovered his passion to become a writer. Wrting was the only talent and it was the only outlet for him to find who he is.
If there was one thing that I’ve noticed that has changed me, that is music. Before I got into music, I was someone completely different. But then about 10 years ago, I finally bought my first music CD; it was a soundtrack to the movie, Crow: City of Angels. That day, something just clicked in me, like a missing piece of a puzzle. After that, while my sister was at school, every chance I got I went into her already extensive music collection and began listening to more and more music. It was essentially a snowball effect from there. I just kept getting my hands on more and more music until I’ve amassed currently almost 500 albums.
Much of my personality changed as well. It changed many of the ways I looked at the world because I started hearing so many more perspectives on it through the music. Instead of just a visual representation I had grown up with, I now had an audio representation of the world. So many ways of translation just coming straight to me through my ears. My views just broadened up so much and I started to accept much more into my life. I used to never like change. If I was at a restaurant, I’d get only what I absolutely knew I would like. Music made me to become much more experimental as it opened my eyes and helped me become much more acceptable of change and trying new things.
I would say that’s the biggest thing I have learned from music. Is the prospect of how beautiful things can become if looked at in more than one way. Music showed this to me and taught me a way to be able to finally express it. I used to have such a hard time expressing myself, but music became my avenue for expression. Now whatever effects me, it can show in my work, and the music I write. Again, music taught me how to accept change, and also to become more passionate. Well it kind of goes hand in hand to me, as expression leads to passion, and vice versa. I tried to do that with art, but it just never fully took me the way music did. I’ve grown and changed more from music than anything else in my entire life. If you knew me ten years ago, you wouldn’t even know me anymore. It’s funny how much some of the most simple things to some people, can be so complex and life changing to others. But thankfully, I was fortunate enough to discover music, because I can’t imagine anymore the way I was. Now my world is so much more open to interpretation in ways I never thought possible before.
Music would probably be the first drug I can say I ever discovered. When I listened to that movie soundtrack for the first time, listening to all those great bands, I just felt such a rush like nothing I ever felt before. It was insane to me. That cd was a gateway for me to bigger and better music. A lot of music is just music to me, thats all, I still enjoy it, but some bands and soundtracks are something else. My prime example is Tool. When I first heard their song called “Third Eye”, I learned that music carried no boundaries. This was music unlike any rock I’ve ever heard before. It was so intricate as it went on. So many parts to the song that sound nothing alike, but they mesh together like a beautiful tapestry. Parts are peaceful and beautiful, and parts are a tempest of intruments, and each section rung a note inside me, just taking me someplace else entirely when I closed my eyes. Its like, behind my eyelids, I could see what the singer was seeing as he sang his heart out.
The first time this ever happened to me, I could remember vividly like I was on a sandy desert, but it wasn’t hot, it was rather cool and the sky was pinkish. And there were pools of water all over the place, like it just rained for hours, and inside the sand, there were black shiny stones everywhere scattered. After that happened to me, I been hooked on Tool ever since. No music has had a more profound effect on me before that day. Man, if anything can make a grown woman feel like a little child that is so excited before christmas, that is Tool for me. So overall, music has showed me how much more there is in the world besides what we see everyday. The eyes are just one sense, and the ears can tell just as much about the world as the eyes. The world just appears more beautiful when you can see deeper inside of it. You have to see the abstract of something to truly appreciate it for how beautiful it is.
