The rhythm of life 🎵

Not a day goes by when we don’t come in contact with it. We experience it in real life, on the TV, through the radio, over the Internet. It makes us feel a whole range of emotions. And no, I’m not talking about incessant COVID news updates. I’m referring, of course, to music. While the concept of music is a bit of a tricky one to pin down and define, the Oxford dictionary makes as good a job of it as any: “vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion”. Like, how stunning is that?? The amazing thing about music, in my opinion, is how it can be enjoyed by literally everyone - it is deeply personal, it transcends language, culture, generations and nationality and touches us in a way that is very hard to explain. The fact that it is carried through the air via vibrations makes it a multi-sensory phenomenon too, thus opening it up to those who have hearing difficulties, making sure no-one is excluded from the experience.

The effects of music on my own life go way back. I started set-dancing at the age of 3 (shoutout to John Stack), and I have been playing music since I was six, starting on the tin whistle before moving on to the fiddle, the guitar and the piano later on in life. In my mother’s family, singing is a huge part of our identity, and a gathering of aunties, uncles, grandparents and cousins cannot, will not, go by without a song or a tune. You’d be forgiven for thinking that, from a young age, I truly cherished music and all it had to offer, and the huge role it played in my life. Truth be told, I think it took me until I was 15 years old to begin to intrinsically enjoy playing music. It was at that point in my existence that I started doing it for me. And am I glad that I did. Over a decade on, I see with a renewed sense of appreciation and awareness all the good that music has brought to my life, be it in the form of wonderful friends, magnificent opportunities, pure craic, and building my own self-confidence and self-worth.

Having spoken to a few friends about this in the last week, their opinions are much the same: one friend in particular admitted to having few friends that weren’t musicians, because, as she put it, “they just don’t get it”. While at the time this made me laugh, there is some truth in it too, as would be the case in any social group which centres around a particular skill or aspect of our culture. There is something very earthy and metaphysical about the connection between musicians: we appreciate what it takes to pull music manually out of an instrument, to thread it through the air artfully, to put our own twist on it, to create our own melodies never heard before. The notion of music as a glue that bonds us was further emphasised to me in a conversation I had years ago with a girl in my year in college, who remarked that, after sitting and playing a tune with her sister, it felt like she had had a conversation with her, almost telepathically.

Outside of the realm of actual performance, simply listening to music has influenced me hugely too. Picture a typical night out (you’re probably doing this with tremendous difficulty, grainy black-and-white images making their way to the front of your consciousness as you struggle to think that far back in history). I could be with people that aren’t the most fun, feeling physically ill, or in a horrible sweaty night club, but if the DJ is throwing out absolute bangers, then we good. Honestly. As long as the music is fire, nothing else matters. Also, the people in charge of soundtracks for movies, TV shows and ads know exactly what they are doing when they put together those notes that tug on your heart-strings. I could be feeling nothing for a particular character, but accompany their sob story with some moving piano and I’m a mess.

Having this emotional connection to music has become a coping mechanism for me too when times are tough, and I know having spoken with people in my life that I am not alone in feeling this way. I remember in 6th year when studying for my Leaving Cert how much of a treat it was to pick up my fiddle and fire out a set of reels after a long evening hunched over my desk. My dad told me years ago too that a grand piano sits in the foyer of Galway Clinic, and although I have never been, I can imagine how soothing it must be for patients, visitors and healthcare workers alike to have some gentle melodies accompany them through what are no doubt extremely difficult moments in time. On a related but significantly lighter note (no pun intended), workouts, cycles and runs feel that bit easier and more manageable when we have a few club anthems pulsating through our auditory canals. We don’t hear our ragged breathing, or grunting, or the imagined thoughts of others around us. We just push on until we reach the finish line. You can take that one literally or metaphorically; either way, it still stands.

Let me conclude this post by asking that you increase your awareness of music in your life going forward. Truly listen to it when it comes on. Appreciate what it took to turn it from just a thought ricocheting off the inside of someone’s cranium to a full-blown piece of actual music. Notice how it makes you feel as it hovers through the air. Acknowledge the structure it gives to your life. Be thankful that you have the capacity to hear it in the first place, too.