You Are the Music
By: Mary Christensen
“Tis you that are the music, not your song. The song is but a door which, opening wide, lets forth the pent-up melody inside. Your spirit’s harmony, which clear and strong; sings but of you.” Words spoken from a poem called “Listening” by Amy Lowell, from A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass, and the coral piece “You are the Music” arranged by Dan Forrest which my quotes will come from in this essay. Music is part of our soul. It’s one of many things that naturally appeals to our many emotions. Everyone has their own song and it’s up to us to find it.
I have always loved music. It is a part of me that I can not get rid of. Music is what makes me who I am today, and it is what will make me become the rest of myself in the future. It appeals to my emotions so boldly that within an instant I can hear a song playing in my head that can describe the situation that I am currently partaking in. It also affects my many memories. I can be standing there and smell popcorn and the background changes in an instant. I’m standing at the Delta Fair in Kennett, Missouri listening to the carnival songs and watching the teenagers (many of whom I grew up with) walk around, gossip and ride the many rides the carnival brings every year.
Have you ever noticed that when you want to get pumped up you always turn on some type of song with a beat? (Rap music, techno, etc…) It’s the bass that makes you bob your head along with the many different melodies and harmonies that are being played to it. If you’re an athlete before a game, you sit there with your headphones in playing music to help you concentrate on the game that’s about to start. The music is flowing through your whole body giving you the energy you need to stay focused on your goal. Many of these people use this technique to focus.
When you’re sad, you turn on a sad song (if you are anything like me) that talks about how you feel. It always says the things you can’t, and helps you get your emotions out in the open. Sometimes you might even turn on a happy song to take your mind off of things and to help you just have a good day. Music is part of everyone’s soul. There is just something about it that is appealing to the people who hear it. From a song on the radio, to a song sung by a choir, or even one played on the piano or on the guitar, music appeals to every person in some way.
The most beautiful music is played without lyrics. It’s just there waiting for you to write your own words to it. For you tell your story on its melody. As the poem “Listening” says, “Tis you that are the music not your song.” It’s you who is the music, not the song. You make up the music to your life, the rest just plays around you. Life, your emotions, nature, is all a part of the world and your there playing your own song. A phrase from the same poem says, “Throughout your whole life long, your songs, your thoughts, your doings, each divide. Each divide this perfect beauty.” You make yourself beautiful by what song you play other people. What you let them see. What you do in your song divides you from everyone else. It shows them how you are different and why. Each athlete has a different song that they listen to as they are getting pumped up before a big game. Each person has their own “sad” song they listen to when they are upset. Everyone is different but we all have a song, and it plays in harmony with the people around us.
“Waves within a tide, waves within a tide, or single notes, or single notes, a mid a glorious throng! The song of earth has many different chords, tis you. Ocean has many moods and many tones. Yet, always ocean.” We are waves within a tide; we are one of earth’s many chords. We tie in with the trees and the oceans, and the cities; we have a melody that plays in tune with the rest of the earth. That is why our emotions tie in so deeply with music because we are constantly playing one song throughout our lives. When you hear a beautiful song it just brightens your day, because it is in tune with your song, and it’s singing your melody with the rest of the world.
“So is this one music? So is this one music? With a thousand cadences, a thousand cadences, a thousand cadences, tis you, that are the music not your song. The song is but a door which opening wide, let’s forth the pent up melody. Tis you that are the music.” Our song is a door which opens wide for everyone to see. It’s an open door for other people to play their melody along with ours.
“Let’s forth the pent-up melody inside. Your spirits harmony, which clear and strong, sings but of you”, ending the poem. When we open ourselves up to the world, and we don’t close our door, people can hear our harmony clear and strong, and it sings of us. It tells our story, it tells our emotions and how we feel about things. It shows everyone else who we really are and what our goals in life are.
Everyone has a song and it’s up to us to find it; it’s up to us to let everyone else hear it and see how beautiful we truly are. Music in general is beautiful, but it’s how we play the song to other people, that makes it our own. It’s how we show our emotions that makes the song ours in the end. You are the music, we have our own lives to live we wrote our own song and we play our own song. In tune with everyone else, the tides in the oceans, the cities, the places we go. We make one perfect song that sings but of us, always.
