Music

Got the most exciting text from my mom and it was as follows: Josh is going to be on channel 11 @ 7.  (I know! My mom used the @ symbol.) So I rushed home and enjoyed all my favorite songs. Honestly, though I own every CD and DVD, I rarely listen to Josh; yet every time I do I just can't help but feel cheerful. He sang Lullaby and Weeping, both of which have an African vibe... not African-American but Africa Africa - as in South. Most of his songs have some international flare but these two are especially meaningful to me for some reason. These two songs especially remind me that there is a big world out there.

Music does that. It points out that there is a world beyond us. It gives us a chance to be in a space different than where we are. Through music we connect to distant people, ideas, and emotions. 

Not that everything I listen to is intensely meaningful and profound. I could not argue that there is much to gain from the JoBros and I don't profess to really "get" the musical genius of Cold Play. What I do get from music is a varied experience. I can grow, if only emotionally, from it. For a moment I'm elsewhere in someone else's life. I'm in Germany with Xavier Naidoo, in a London pub with Mika, in some smoky cafe with Matt Nathanson, at some venue in Long Beach with Sublime, then to 1960's Baltimore with Tracy Turnblad. I can synthesize their experiences -- expressed through music -- into mine.  

Paradoxically, music is a way for me to express or, rather, tap into my many sides. I listen to my Kanye before I got out on the town and Sissel on cool autumn days. There's Jesse McCartney for that leaving-work excitement ("Don't stress, don't stress, don't stress") and Claire de Lune for dinner time. We the Kings for the inner-teenager and John Mayer and Jason Mraz when I'm just being me.

It's almost as if my mom could have texted "Ben Folds/ Paramore/ Beach Boys / Michael Buble

is on" and I would have also expanded my world view while tapping into myself. Music just does that.