When I was young, I liked music but I really didn't know why. Maybe it was the sounds: the physical density of certain waves together, or maybe it was the attention being musical afforded me, or maybe the mysterious feeling of resonance inside my body. Looking back, I still can't quite put my finger on it. But it stuck.
As a teenager, I become more studious and started to really listen. Focus hard, and listen.
My musical adolescence was exciting. I learned to play Chopin, Bach, Haydn - large and challenging pieces of sophisticated music. It sounded impressive, and it was fun. I've always loved working with my hands. Plus, my skills improved to the point where I could earn a little cash and some work experience.
But even then, in many ways I was musically ignorant. I could not replicate sounds I heard, I could 'read' music, but actually I had very little rhythmic understanding of what was going on in the musical notation. And I could not for the life of me, despite hours of trying, make the sounds I heard in my head come out of my instrument.
Although I had some technical skill, I did not have the fluency necessary for complete self-expression in musical terms. It was frustrating, but I could create music by improvising. Occasionally a really good idea would come out the ends of my fingers and I would hang on to it.
That said, the phrase "self-expression" sometimes makes me cringe. The idea that "self-expression" is the be-all and end-all has led to lots of bad artwork. It conjures visions of self-important psycho-babble, people "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," to quote the Bard.
But when I started listening to jazz, I realized that people really can speak through their instruments. I was too immature to be able to follow the entire conversation (let alone contribute), but I could hear musicians commenting, lamenting, or throwing in the occasional one-liner.
The more I listen, the more I realize that music is a conversation. In several ways - between the listeners and musicians, each of whom brings their own experiences and level of musical proficiency to the table, but also between musicians themselves, who "speak the language," and who have the ability to narrate and interpret sounds.
Music can be very rhetorical, and a heartfelt player will relate sounds in a way that can change our perspective - seems ridiculous, I know. But narrative is such a powerful force in the human psyche: it frames details and presents events, illuminates images and casts shadows.
And somehow, a precise combination of sounds can intervene in the atmosphere and speak in an expressive way analogous to the human voice.
We all tell stories about ourselves, and those stories shape who we are - who we really are, and who we pretend to be. And musical storytelling can be the same - facts and fiction, details omitted, truths disguised as real life.
When we listen to someone tell a story, we hear the words, and those words impact us. They meet us where we are and they take us somewhere else. And they make us reflect on who is speaking,and how we relate to them.
Narratives and conversations, whether spoken with words or musical instruments, have to potential to transform us into somebody new. When the story is over and we come back from the transient world they have created, we are not always who we used to be, or even who we expect to be.
Maybe that's why I like music.
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