“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.”
(Victor Hugo)

Sometimes you find an artist whose voice and words reverberate within your being. Sometimes you hit play and the desultory descent of your day is suddenly yanked back to meaning. It usually happens on days when our emotions are stale with desuetude and if we can just hold it together and get home already. But then music can do something funny to us. It can force us to feel things in the loveliest and most wrenching ways. And those times when I hit shuffle and raise the volume to drown out the world and a song comes on and I’m suddenly drowning in all the things I was trying to forget – those times I find it easier to succumb to the music and let it tear away at me. It’s a good hurt, like alcohol on a cut or taking out a splinter.

I think it’s because I too often try to hide away within myself that a song has so much power. My emotions are teetering so close to the surface that the right chord, a similar word, gives the final push into open air.

When someone asks me what music I like I usually don’t know what to say. But if I would answer in full honesty, I like music that can be a soundtrack to my life and to my memories and to my thoughts. And if one day I can strut through the train station to Marina and the Diamonds feeling like the embodiment of the sassy bitch pastel aesthetic, the next I can be blasting Chase Rice in my car (that suddenly feels like a pickup truck).

Today’s been a bit more raw, a bit more introspective, a bit more Rag’N’Bone Man. And it’s okay if I let go of a tear because that’s what music does for me. It is both ineffable and the ultimate expression of myself. It is what helps me let go and helps me put it back together.

And I think that’s beautiful.

 

Best,

Merav