Music is something truly magical. It’s always been crazy to me how something like a chord progression or a drum rhythm can make you feel a certain way. The way certain instruments sound as well, like a beautiful saxophone or string solo in a song, is just heavenly. It can put you at ease and make you feel nostalgic, while an aggressive electric guitar solo, for example, impress you greatly and give you goosebumps, a result of an indescribable feeling of inspiration and awe. Songs like Pink Floyd’s classic ‘Comfortably Numb’ or Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’ are the first that come to mind, followed very closely by ‘Hey You,’ or ‘Time’. There’s really no rock band quite like Pink Floyd. Anyway, what is causing this effect? Music is only sound after all, isn’t it? It’s understandable that music with lyrics could have such an effect on us, since words have meaning and can therefore be consciously interpreted, leading to emotions. Sound has no meaning though, right? How is it, then, that a certain piece of music can make us feel happy while another can bring us face to face with our deepest and darkest ideas, or even the infinite sadness of the world, of the absurd and all it entails? I’m not sure how it all works, but I’m happy with just knowing music exists and is available to us all. Life without music would not only be incredibly bland, but just very weird and not entirely satisfying, at least to me. Although, if music had never been a thing, we would never know what we missed out on, but I for one don’t even want to imagine that. Now obviously, music is not something as important as family or love, or the true essentials of life like food or shelter, but it’s a lot of the small things that make our life better that often go unnoticed and taken for granted. We need food and shelter, but when we have all those things covered, what do we do in our shelter? We listen to music or whatever else we like to do with our time. The necessities are only necessities, but they are only necessary so that we may continue living, and we live for the small things, for the things we love and enjoy. See, since I was a little kid, the thing I wanted the most was an mp3 player. I couldn’t wait to download some music and just listen to it, as much of it as I could get. They only had a few GBs of space back in those days, pretty much twenty years ago, but I didn’t know too much music and that was enough for me. I was just getting into music, and I had no way to imagine just how much of an impact music would have on me in the future. When I first started smoking weed, I would go with a few friends and find a spot to smoke a joint at lunchtime, maybe skip a class even, and although we had good times and laughs, I eventually started getting way more into my thoughts than into our conversations. As I grew, I started to like getting high on my own a lot more, just being in my own ideas and listening to music. I’ve always like real rap a lot more than gangsta rap or trap, which is what most of my friends always played around each other since it was cool to listen to. I would get high and zone out to 2Pac’s lyrics about having to stay positive and how tomorrow there’s always a brighter day, about the struggles of the people he knew or saw around him, about the discrimination and the corruption of society, and it just inspired me in the greatest way. I would listen to Bob Marley and I was suddenly in Jamaica, getting high by the beach on a beautiful sunny day. Pink Floyd and The Beatles took me to the sixties, even Led Zeppelin and the Stones. Norah Jones, Sade and Lana Del Rey always soothe my soul with their beautifully soulful voices. Every type of music would put me in a specific mood, and my favorite thing to do was just to get super stoned and listen to my big playlist on shuffle, meaning the one with pretty much all the songs I’ve liked over the years. Those were great times, and although some would say I’ve wasted hours on just weed and music, which is nothing too productive, I would have to respectfully disagree. I mean, there’s a reason why I still do the same exact thing to this day.
If you have a few minutes please check out my song ‘time flies.’ I appreciate you!
rebel eye 