It is a strange place right now, this world. You switch on the news and you’re met with grim and desolate news. Watching TV is no longer fun and seductive, like in the past. When you seek an escape route on social media, Trump meets you with juvenile tweets, you wonder what he is doing on twitter, leave alone how he became president. The internet wouldn’t leave you in peace, either, with pop ups on spinning the lucky wheel to win an iPhone, or how to gain Abs in a week. It is a world in chaos, confused in its own doom and gloom, but that doesn’t explain why music, the therapy of the soul and mind, the gate away from this dim world is still belittled.
Many people have tried to commingle words in trying to describe music. Plato, however, promptly hit the bull’s eye, acknowledging that, “Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything”. I don’t want to pretend to care on what you think about music, but if you don’t understand what it does for our souls, then you might as well graduate from Havard School of ignorance.
I’m thinking of those moments when the world of Earth seem inhabitable. When grief and sorrow come flowing over us like the waves of an ocean, toxifying everything including the air we breathe. Then you plug in your earphones, and press play on the music and then suddenly as a wink or a shower during a cold season, you get lost, in a planet of your own, a world of music. Where everything is rhythmic and lyrical. Where the sorrows and the grief are turned into sounds of harmony that soothes the soul. The heartbreak and the stress is slowly overturned, and you could feel the seismic shift happening in your heart. As soon as the music drowns out to the ears, it echoes in the heart and it responds with beats so strong, yet so relaxed; the oxymoron of good music.
And if I were Rainbow Cowell in her novel ‘Eleanor and Park’, I would unapologetically confess how “The lyrics swim through my cerebral cortex like a wakeful dream, the notes relaxing me, enabling the song to call to my entire being. Music could never be something superfluous to me, it is medicine delivered in the most divine way.” So when you are stressed, don’t run to drinking. Plug in your earphones, and listen to some slow music and sooth your souls. Music heals. Get a dose of some reggae or classical blues. If you don’t believe me ask Dr. David, King Saul’s music therapist. When you’re sad, don’t slow down yourself. Remind yourself what it feels to be happy and joyful with some uplifting music. Rock and roll your way out of sadnes
This is an invitation to take control of your life by listening to some good music. I can’t start to explain how music was used during the fight for freedom in Africa or the rich history it carries across generations. And you might have come across a video of how farmers are creatively using music to motivate and energize themselves while tilling their farms. It can be the best thing in your life, this music thing, if you start realizing what it can do. And while you are at it, do not waste your short life on bad and poorly curated music in the name of supporting someone. Why would you want to risk your heart? So if it doesn’t teach your brain how to be peaceful and calm, and if the tempo does not elevate your spirit nor make you feel alive, don’t listen to it.
What do you think?