Notes on a Thought

I don't want to sound redundant.

But what I'm essentially writing is the overused phrase, "music is my life!".

You see it all over facebooks and myspaces and internet profiles. What usually follows is a list of artists like Nickleback or Taylor Swift. When I see it, my mind defaults to passing it off with this elitist attitude. Anyone who could write something like that must be musically ignorant.
And moments after I chastise myself for thinking such thoughts. Who am I to say what is good and what is not? Why am I so quick to judge someone? I will never stop having those thoughts though. The music I listen to is SO obviously superior to anyone else's, right? That filter my ears and mind use so often is flawless. Only good comes through it. Obviously, I'm being sarcastic, but my mind subconsciously believes this until I tell myself to be less critical and more open minded.
I find it so fascinating how we possess music as our own. We listen to a song that so perfectly captures the mood we want to feel or the words we want to sing. And just like that the song is ours. It's a flag we proudly wave above our heads or a secret we hold in the back of our mind. If someone else likes it, we get excited that someone else has "good/similar taste" or we feel this intrusion.

This doesn't happen for each and every song I listen to...but it happens more often than not. And when it does it's a thing of beauty:
Music is the soft shade of grey my fingertip sounds as I flip through my iPod library. The tap against the touch-sensitive screen prompts the music to flow through the off-white wires plugging my ears. A melodious string of musical notes start one after another within the song. It's a live recording and I hear the slight inhale of the lead singer before he breathes lyrics into the microphone. The audience chatter dies down suddenly and I can hear their necks craning to face the silhouette in the spotlight. The voice, carrying a piece of the artists' heart, travels through the hanging speakers on either side of the stage. Those in the audience with a mind at ease soon click into the tune.
These sounds forming as one into a song on my iPod. A piece of beauty I can open at any given moment. The world is a beautiful place.
At the quiet moments, I hear my feet shuffling, each foot to pavement landing a sonic boom against the soft vibrations flowing through my brain. Other times, as I sit or lie in place, all is still. The tap of the screen, the notes flowing through the pieces of plastic in my ears. I close my eyes and I give my whole self over to the sound. The orchestration begins its steady build up to the musical equivalent of an orgasm. It's a slow but steady rise that seems to tenderly synchronize my heart beat with the tempo. I am in tune with the song and the life around me. Images pass through my mind against the insides of my eyelids - normally mundane visuals from the day that are now somehow placed in this heightened filter. And in some instances, its just a comforting pitch black image of sound. The melody replacing any need for images of every day life, girls, beauty, God.

And when the music begins its steady descent or its abrupt stop, there is silence. And the silence has a beat of its own.