Let The Music Speak

Let the music speak; for it liberates us all.

“We be of one blood, ye and I”, wrote Kipling, and besides sharing the very essences of humanity, our blood and bone, our tears and smiles, we also share the love and joy and catharsis of music.  It’s hard-wired into our DNA.  Everybody’s got a jam.  Everybody.

And if you’re like me, you are dialed-in deep into that jam right now, swimming in its rhythmic waters, bathing in its melodic relief, soaking in its pulsing harmony and rubbing it all over like cosmic sunscreen lotion, anything to block out the ever-hotter rays of crazy bouncing off the surface of planet Earth right now.

I’m mainlining music, just hooked up to a steady drip, drip, drip (backatcha, Sparks fam), channeling the rising anxiety of a troubled world into an outlet that can take the firehose flow of sudden, violent inspiration.  Writers write, dancers dance, sailors sail, flyers fly.

Dreamers dream, lovers love, hopers hope.

That’s all I have to say about all of this, any of this.  The rest of it will be said by the music.  The past couple of months have been spent in deep preparation for (finally!) work to wrap on The Beauty and the Terror.  There was always going to be a theme of light vs. dark that coursed through the project, but these past several weeks are weaving themselves into the narrative.  I’m going deep for the next 60 days before fall production ramps up again.

I’m sure that I’ll feel a lot better after the emotional purge that comes with recording an album and, hopefully, there will be a lot more to feel better about in general.  Until then, we’ve got to pick our battles and find the beauty in the every day, appreciate the small moments and greet each new moment as a gift.

If we drag our feet, hang our heads and mourn the loss of a life that seemed actually pretty good in comparison, then we’re setting ourselves up for failure, and a rotten time overall.  

I can’t Pollyanna my way through current events, but I can remain hopeful and focus on the things that are right with this world, take those little victories as cumulative, and make as much music as possible.  

Would I like a do-over on 2020?  Hell, yeah!  But, unless you’ve got a Delorean, a flux capacitor and some plutonium, that’s plain not gonna happen.  So the best we can do is remix this year on the fly, and give it a better soundtrack.

Let the music speak; for it liberates us all.