Music as Soul Mate

As happens when one gets old, there is time, to look back into the life one has lived. This can often reveal some surprises, eras enjoyed, jobs that prepared one for something else, the luck of timing, and in this case, the role music has played throughout my life. I discovered an internal disc jockey who made sure I always had a soundtrack to live within, a musical addict, that felt beyond the sound, to the feelings behind the music. Rhythm played inside me constantly.

I first became aware of music when I heard “que sera, sera.”at 6. After that I was taken. The radio became a fixture in my early life. I think music gave me some ability to process my inchoate youthful feelings. As a young teenager, I began to collect records, first albums, then later 45’s. Music made me do it then; and it’s still making me do it now. I bounce to a rhythm —and would dance if I could — like I have done throughout my life.

I used to have a paper route. From age 10 to 15, I delivered papers to the same houses, at the same time, every day. It didn’t turn into a boring chore, because my father gave me a transistor radio, that I carried with me. The music of the late 50’s, and the early 60’s, transported me, despite the weather, from house to house. I didn’t know it, but I was developing a life-long love of music, a life-long pattern of being sensitive to the provocative nature of sound.

When I was a teenager I was moody. I used to go into my room, and listen to music for hours. It was my way of processing too many complex feelings. The music calmed me, and helped me feel connected to something beyond me. There were voices, lyrics, or musical sequences, that would reassure me. Somehow, the anguish and uncertainty of teendom seeped deeper into me, and became more bearable, because the music touched me. The world seemed —though it wasn’t — a more harmonious place.

Now, over 70 years later, I am still trying to make the world harmonious, by playing the music that elevates my being. Now its playlists, but I have followed a host of sound technologies, in my constant quest for the music that calmed down, and reduced the scary tensions I felt. Looking back, I see the many times music has accompanied me into the depths. I faltered all along the way, but the music never did. It always provided the soothing medicinal balm needed. I came to rely upon it, to help me come to terms with this sacred baffling existence.

Looking again — as this prolonged life allows me to do — I can see that my relationship with music has been one of the guiding elements of my life. If I believed in soul mates, which I don’t, I would consider music such a partner.

Certainly, it has always inspired me. Helping me feel the streak of goodness in our kind, the playfulness of Life, and my own uneasy journey through it all. It has brought many forms of pathos too. Enough so — I never suffer from a Pollyannish perspective of Life. I have felt the music of Life, and know some of its varied moods. I am constantly resonating along.

Music will, no doubt, be with me when I finally go home. It has soothed and provoked me all along the way. These final days it will help, as it already has, integrate the compelling nature of the mystery. The vitality of music has enlivened me, and carried me through this place of unknowing. I am surprised, and pleased, to re-recognize this old friend. My life is more harmonious, because of the rhythmic throb brought to my soul.