The Joy of Music

Reflecting on the presence of music throughout my life

For as long as I can remember, I have loved everything about music.  

I remember sitting in the passenger seat of my dad’s golden Acura TLC when I was nine years old on the way to school, the bittersweet melodies of The Smiths and the dynamic notes of Joy Division sound-tracking our 9 am conversations about the girls I sat next to and played hop-scotch with during recess; to this day I can still see my dad’s eyes crinkling at their corners as he laughs when I tell him I’m the “hop-scotch champion” whenever “Love Will Tear Us Apart” comes on shuffle.  

I remember blasting the sweet sound of both sadness and sanction, removal and renewal as I took one last stroll through the flickering halls of Metea Valley High School, Beach House’s “Drunk in LA” whirling me off into a perfect storm of lasting laughter and loose associations, faded friendships and forgotten feelings. Such nostalgia fills my soul as I hear the same melancholy notes and melodies in Max Richter’s classical piece “On the Nature of Daylight” while writing this, yet I find that it is now characterized by a realization of how different everything is now; the girl who used to fall asleep in calculus every day because she didn’t think it really “meant anything” is now the girl who stays at Raynor until 1:30 in the morning applying for internship after internship. 

I love music because I believe it “colors the air”, and allows for us to paint the mural of our own lives with all shades of blue and green and yellow and pink; it is timeless and transformative, reflective and reminiscent of all that is beautiful in the world. It is quintessential to the human experience in that a single song can be interpreted in a diverse multitude of ways, putting seemingly unexplainable emotions and experiences into the sounds of adagios and allegrettos and visions of AC/DC and Ariana Grande.  

In this sense, I believe music to be like life, and life to be like music. 

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