While Listening to Music

While listening to music, I feel like I am listening to something I have always belonged to. Listening to music is like listening to something that used to be my world, a long time ago. And it is as though music had been with me since not just months or years, but ages. I don’t know if past life and rebirth are a reality, but music makes me believe in them. When I listen to music, it feels like I am meeting someone I know since a long time; it’s like meeting someone I know since the day I came into this world or even before that. I feel strongly connected with music whenever I listen to it.

I find music in nature; there’s music in the rustling leaves, the whistling winds, the babbling waters, the roaring sea waves and in the shells and conches that echo the sound of the sea. In everything that’s lively, either because it’s living or enlivening, there is music. Music requires no concrete form to reside in; it is omnipresent. It is definitely not something to be heard; it is something to be listened to and felt. True listening is feeling, understanding and absorbing. Listening to music is feeling the melody that fills the void of silence. Feeling music is listening to the silence that is filled in the melody.

While listening to music, I listen to that silence but it’s the melody that lingers in my mind for long after the music stops. I fear I am disregarding the melodies while listening to the silence. But melodies stay with me, as if to tell me, I haven’t hurt them. While listening to music, I feel I am dissolving in the melodies that fill the air. The silence that lingers after the melodies fade away overwhelms me with its power; it possesses the power to melt the strongest of hearts.

While listening to music from the different types of musical instruments (why call them ‘instruments’? They are the means to create music!), I sketch a mental image of the music each of them produces. The music each of them produces has a character of its own. The music from string instruments is sometimes melancholy; it's as if the strings are pining for someone they miss so much. At other times, this music is so cheerful; it's as if the strings are resonating with joy; the joy of having found someone they had been missing since long. Percussion instruments are beaten.(?) Do they react with an outcry of rebel, and produce rhythm? Or do they respond rhythmically to each tap on their shoulders? Wind instruments breathe in air and ‘breathe out’ melodious music. It's as if they whistle to the tune of the winds. String and wind instruments ‘sing’, percussion instruments ‘accompany’.

We brag about playing these musical instruments. It's actually they, who capably play the roles they have chosen to. We bring them together for orchestration, but when they are played together, it feels like they were always meant to be with each other, to take the listeners close to another world; a world of purity and piety.

While listening to music, I find that music can give you two kinds of joys; the joy of getting what's most expected and the joy that lies in the pleasant surprise of getting something unexpected! Think about it; those of you who know a little bit about music might have experienced this. While listening to a musical composition, you begin to imagine a certain pattern of musical notes to follow. If it does, you are happy. But what if it does not? When you get to hear something unexpected and melodious, you listen in amazement, wondering where it came from. Probably, it comes from Him.

While listening to music, I realize that music can never really make you sad. Even sad tunes don't make you feel depressed, do they? Perhaps, there is so much positivity in music that it can make you cry but cannot make you sad.

When I listen to music, I can feel it within me. Every time I listen to any form of music, I can sense the relationship between music and me getting stronger. Even the thought of music leaving me, makes me restless; music is a part of me, I can't let it go away. I am no great singer, or accomplished artist. But at times I feel, a day might come when I will become one; and perhaps... the day is not too far.