Last night was Open Mic Night-- the first Thursday of every month. Rose and I realized on Sunday that we hadn't practiced anything. You get caught up in school work, you don't pick up the guitar for a few days, and then just one more day, and one more day, because there's always one more thing you could get done instead. And then it's the week of. Well, I'm not going to tell you that we pulled one out of the hat and managed a set list in four days, because we didn't. But I still went, and there were some amazing musicians. Some I had seen before, some entirely new, but it always strikes me just how brilliant some of these people are. It's always incredibly humbling, seeing people writing their own music, hearing people live that sound better than studio artists today.
It also made me question myself a little. I'm a guitarist, sure, but nothing like them. As a guitarist, walking around campus makes you wonder what's so special about yourself-- on this campus especially, it seems like every third person you meet plays the guitar. Either that, or they're way more experienced with another instrument than you've ever been with any form of music. At home if you were a guitarist, you stuck out. It was your thing, the thing you owned and the thing you loved. So what after all does make it special?
Well, it's just that. It is the thing I love. Of course I envy those guitarists who write their own music, and then can get up and perform it. It's amazing and beautiful-- and it reminds me of why I love playing. I don't strive to be better for the sake of being better. I want to learn how to play well, how to finger pick and how to sing because music it seems, can so often express what words alone can't. There's a poetry to them and the way their written, but there's an emotion to the music too, the different instruments used and the tone of the lyrics. Everyone talks so much about how talking to someone face to face is so much more real than textual communication, simply because you can see the person's expressions, hear the intonation of their voice, and cue into their gestures. Well, has anyone ever told you about this amazing song, and then sent you...the lyrics? Next time someone tells you about a song, look up the lyrics first. Don't listen, just read. It's not the same, is it? You're missing a whole element of what the piece is trying to say. Maybe the general point gets across, but music is like talking face to face.
For me though, music takes it a step further. There are so many instruments overlaid, like layers of emotion, and so many ups and downs throughout the course of the song. It's like a song bottles up* in just a few minutes what an hour-long conversation might try to say. It's like the purest form of communicating exactly what you're trying to say. It takes away yet another layer, tears down yet another barrier between people.
That's why I love playing. Why I want to be able to sing and pick and strum-- it feels like the most pure and true way of expressing exactly what I'm trying to say. I'm sure you have those few songs that, beyond being your favorite songs, they make you pause when they come on. You feel something tugging in your chest, in that hollow just below your heart, like something wanting to escape, something that can't be expressed in words-- and the music is that outlet. I play for the lyrics, I play for the music, and I play for the emotional release. In a world where everything can said rather than shown, music is my way of pushing through that barrier of text.
-Kal
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