My escape, my peace. As I breathe with the soft C key, my mind starts to slow down. I smile to myself. I feel my eyes fill with tears due to the beauty of this music. As the song gets louder and faster, my heartbeat synchronizes with the increasing beat.
I feel alive; I am alive. Lost and wandering in the elegance of the music. You could hear the passion and tones through the cadence of the notes and melody. It almost feels like a dramatic movie scene where your life flashes before your eyes before you say goodbye—making you feel as if you can overcome anything because you are the main character of your own story. Bolstering you with an abundance of power and strength where you can love the world and its people despite the actual brutal toxicity that shadows behind it all.
Initially, I only got into this genre of music due to the overwhelming amount of stress I felt in high school. The noises of people constantly bickering about everything you must achieve and do to get into college and succeed was so loud and overpowering that I started losing my own voice. However, the nonstop hustle and anxiety was eventually silenced when I discovered “Moonlight Sonata” by Beethoven and “Clair de Lune” by Claude Debussy. As a piano player at the time, I was naturally aware of the existence of these masterpieces but never took a second to feel the story behind it. Despite its complete lack of words, the true lyricism existed within the detailed music and story it attempted to tell.
I started listening to each piece for precisely what it was made for rather than just background music. I needed a new source of escapism, and every time my brain started to feel overcrowded with thoughts, I put on my headphones and turn the volume on full blast. My two earbuds had me seeing life through a completely different eye, a musical eye. A lens activated only as the piece caves into its gentle instrumental euphony. It always succeeded in taking me to a separate universe that I never wanted to leave again, from facilitating the intensity of any anxiety attack to silencing any intrusive thoughts. Even as simple as giving me the power to speed run an essay in less than two hours, classical music has been the therapy I never thought I would need.
The best way I’ve found to listen is by meditating to it and allowing it to take me on an emotional rollercoaster, while letting my body feel things it has never felt before. Not many people have a Spotify playlist designated to their favorite classical music songs, which is entirely okay. I never take offense to it because, if anything, they are missing out on an out-of-body experience.
My brain waves no longer feel out of control, and every time I feel like I am floating. Dramatic passages raise goosebumps throughout my arms and spine, sometimes bringing tears to my eyes that I would try to hide in public. I will forever be in love with the complexity, time and perfectionism each composer puts into their baby creations. Any lyrical geniuses like Chopin, Beethoven, Debussy and Mozart never fail to fulfill my soul with positivity. All my worries go away as my heart rate slows down the minute that poised finger hits the key.
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