How We Decorate Time- Music

One of the most admirable skills of my generation is our ability to romanticize everything that has ever existed and tear it to pieces at the same time. One object of this romanticization, and perhaps the one most often attacked, is music. Music is more than a composition of words and melodies, it is medicine. It flows with our blood through our veins, streams from our hearts, burns through our lungs and pours into our brains, where it connects every bit of time with an immortal memory.

In the past month, I have experienced a myriad of incidents, lying on various points on the fortunate-to-unfortunate scale. When everything from family, health, travel, friendship, responsibilities, drama, and life, in general, circled me like sharks on chum, I could not help but succumb to a state of pitiful helplessness and inactivity. In the words of Marie Ulven Ringheim (popularly known as Girl In Red), “October passed me by just like any month”, and through this tumultuous time of my year, music kept me afloat.

I once read on Pinterest, “Art is how we decorate space, and music is how we decorate time.” While I do not know who gave such perfect words to this shared thought, I am certain that I have wished more than once for these words to be mine. Music is indeed a language that speaks beyond the barriers of human linguistic skill set, it holds the power to reach the ones beyond hearing in human terms.

Despite the fact that music did save me from entirely submitting myself to wallowing in self-pity, the month of October was definitely still the most irritating time period to listen to music. One of the most widely used streaming platforms restricted many must-have features behind paywalls. As a result of our collective broke-ness and stubbornness, many of my peers and I migrated to other platforms. The search for a suitable, and worthy platform and re-curating our beloved playlists was one that consumed my energy and positivity in ways that none of the other issues had. After searching for what felt like a millennium, at the very end of the month, I finally found a platform that somewhat matched my needs and standards, and finally, my craving to listen to my favorite artists was somewhat satisfied.

Despite my grudges against the initial platform, this experience definitely taught me a lot about how much music impacted the way I led my life- my mood, my experiences, and even my attitude. From each lyric that raises an impulse to get it inked on my body, to each melody that I set as my ringtone promising myself I would not get fed up with it. From each artist with that one, just right song, to the ones whose entire discography (and biography) is on the tip of my fingers. Music is the cry of the alive. Music is the cry of being at home in feelings.