The colors of music

"In the nuances of music lie the answers to all the questions I cannot articulate."

I see the world from many perspectives. But oftentimes, a song becomes my world. I feel its nuances more clearly than my own emotions. Its lyrics feel like a journal entry from a day long lost in the by lanes of time. Every rise and fall of a note feels like happiness and sorrow intermingling, inseparably and beautifully. I lose myself in it, till the only thing that exists is the song. I hear colors in those notes; brilliant vivid colors melding into one, and separating again, and then coalescing in a different pattern. When one note beautifully curves and falls into its lower companion, I see a sloping plateau meeting grassland. A crescendo brings to mind a glorious jagged mountain fearlessly rising into the sky, daring to meet it. Those tiny subtleties in a note, what is called gamaka in Indian music, feels like an intricate cloud pattern in the sky. A slow melody is reminiscent of the serene lapping of waves on a shore. I see sunrise and sunset and rainbows in a song. Sometimes even a waterfall. Power and magic and serenity and sorrow. You name it, and I will give you a song for it.

Instrumental music goes straight to my heart. I hear a really good rendition at times, and it moves me to tears. I feel as if I have seen and felt God, and it is that instrumentalist and his/her music. At times when I get existential, I seek answers in music. I find them there, but cannot translate them to words. It is a tryst music and I share, these questions and answers that cannot be articulated. I am a lover of solitude, and music is perhaps one of the only two things I take with me even there. If you opened up my soul, you would only find books and music. On idyllic days, you would find me humming a song, especially focusing on the tiniest of gamakas, caressing them and acknowledging their perfection, like one would a cherished possession. On days when I find no solace in the world and all its people who constitute my circle, I always turn to music. In that universe, I can find everything I want. I can lose and find myself a hundred times, every discovery different.

Tell me, Reader, have you let yourself love a song completely? Have you felt all that I describe? Music is the most powerful form of magic, it is said. Let yourself feel it :)