I LEARNED HOW TO TIME TRAVLE

Music it speaks to the soul, it defies time, age, race, and gender, it is the wave of systematic sound that has been synchronized to harmonize the spirit. It is Music.

  One day after a hard day at work, my phone illuminated my face in the dim light of my blue paisley resting room. Lying, gazing at the ceiling, my finger tapped play on my first generation I pod. Leon Bridges croons out of my speakers in his elderberry voice. The song envelopes my soul in a lasting embrace. He danced with it, twirled it around and made it sing along. He was transporting me to a 1960’s diner, on a still, hot day in Oklahoma. My body rested against the old record player, and I held a cold coca in my right hand.  I was merely a specter, an observer of the diner’s inner play. I could see but no one could see me, a one-way street. I  saw a young Harrison Parker, sat alone in a tattered red velvet booth, drinking coffee and staring aimlessly out the window. I could feel the weight of his worry on his shoulders, his eyes have witnessed the vile and the unthinkable of humanity.  He was a Negro in the south.  He kept staring in the distance but his finger started tapping as he listened to the sweet hum of blues through the air. They ain’t nothin truly bad when the blues starts to play.  Transforming hush tones and silent stares into a tapping foot or a finger drum. You feel warmer, lighter than before.  This music transports and transcends and lets the worry wither; for just four minutes and thirty-two seconds. My grandpa forgot his worry and remembered his joy. 

I came back to my dimly lit paisley room, eyes shut as the song fades to a close. It’s only then do I let go of my grandfather’s hand. I look down at my empty balled hand and see it slowly unfurl. My visit was over. For four minutes and thirty-two seconds, I could visit my friend. Music heals, it wakes you up to a dream

Music’s timeline can date back to Ancient Greece around 500 B.C. with the nine goddesses of what they classified as art and science. Most music in those days was Gregorian chants for the Catholic Church. After passing their chants through oral generations monk began to notate their Chants. Acoustic instruments came after by accident. Legend has it that Pythagoras was experimenting with an acoustic instrument that closely resembles a guitar and began plucking the string and notating the tones to see their relation to mathematics. Music today has evolved into the broad definition of organized sound, but many argue this is a much to vast meaning. Human speech is a form of organized sound could one say this is music? D I guess it’s debatable. Many philosophers have specified the sufficient conditions of music to have four components: pitch, tonality, rhythm, and experience. With this structure, music is also paradoxically an abstract art form, par excellence. The abstraction of music is the source of its value and beauty.

Music is one of society's greatest inventions. It calms chaos, hypnotizes, it cleanses, it's diplomatic, it tells stories, it’s radical, it’s love and it is an expression, it’s art.  Music touches and communicates complex emotions in a way that is unique to its art form. She, yes she( i  gave it a gender, get over it ) is beautiful and a brings a kind of warmth to a fundamentally lonely existence.