She asks, “What do you when your spirit withers?”
“I feed it music”, I tell her.

And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs
And as silently steal away.
---Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Day Is Done

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I often wonder what I would do if I didn’t have music to wash the agony of all the dust and woe, off my soul. If I couldn’t hide myself in spaces between the ragas, how would I ever cope with the pathos of all the bathos? If I couldn’t dance atop the notes entwined with each other, how would I ever etch vividly in my heart, the sounds of laughter that life brings me?

Wander is where life is, I had written so sometime back. If wander is where life is, music is where wander is. Music takes me places; opening a vista to the world around and beyond me. Music gifts a panorama of possibilities that cement the hopes and plans I pack along for the trips every morning, strengthening the desire for dreams and nostalgia I visit at nights.

Music gives meaning to my memories, setting a tone for life, befitting every reason I give to substantiate it.Sufi music on a melancholic evening by the sea side or a philosophic Gulzar while I watch the sunrise. A fantasy like illayaraja as I watch sunset on the sand dunes or a soothing Ghazal to heel my wounds on a rubbish bus travel in hot deserts. Gambeera Natiyam on an inspired day at work or an aesthetically loud ARR classic to celebrate an ecstatic late night drive. Music colors life.

The beauty of music is,it is my own creation even when I’m only listening to it and the process of such a creation exhilarating. The first time I wrote a song for a composition, I fascinated beyond imagination. To see your words fly in the air, become music and create a life of its own is a profound experiance.It seemed as if something had changed since then, some door was opened, some inhibition broken.

Music is what makes the otherwise long tiring smelly journeys (literal and otherwise) blissful.
It drowns out the noise around and fills one’s being with soulful sounds.It enhances the present, making the world much more interesting.

Places apart, music takes me to people too. I have these songs and playlists reserved for many people in my life, almost as if each song ties me with different people from different times. I safeguard that song and nurture it; just the way I do the relationship. I don’t let any other person or memory accumulate over that song, lest it loses its individuality.

I like what Shelly says;

Are we not formed, as notes of music are,
For one another, though dissimilar?

I wonder how blind I would have been to hypocrisy and illogic of inequalities had I not fallen in love with the music of love. I wish I had let music elevate me much earlier in life. I wish music had inspired the human in me much earlier than today.

Music now, is where I find my universe in. It is only with music that I now have an all encompassing relationship with .Emotionally, intellectually and spiritually stimulating and fulfilling.

It is in the emotional reverberations the sound of music brings, I escape, I revel, I heal, and evolve. True to what Nietzsche says “Without music, life would be a mistake”. But what would be a bigger mistake is to, listen to music yet not listen. That sentence has too many layers to it, the word “music” many connotations.

Music is a revelation. If you revel in it.Music is wisdom. If you search for it.
Music is a charm. With immense strength to create miracles.
Music is love. With magical powers to get one drugged.
Music is life. Infinite and incorrigible.