Tonight music moved me…

Andrew Osegna has just written one of the best blog posts I’ve read in a while. Working in the music industry, it is easy to get to the place where I am not really moved by the music, where everything becomes intellectual. After seeing Andrew play a show Friday, he gave me a copy of his CD Photographs, (which I had not yet heard). And listening to it, I was moved.

I’ve heard a lot of good music recently, much of which has me thinking things like “that was a clever phrase”, or “this track sounds really good” (like Chris Rice’s new CD, What a Heart is Beating For). But I hadn’t really been moved by it, not in the way that words can’t really describe. I recently read a quote by the author E.M. Forster suggesting that “the only books which influence us are those for which we are ready, those which have gone a little further down our particular path than we have gone ourselves.” I think the same is true with music. Listening to Andy’s Too Far to Walk, or We Were Sure We Would Change The World, or even Vegas, but especially Too Far to Walk, being reminded that others have taken the same journey, I can feel “hope being restored”, as Andy puts it.

Tonight music moved me. Music pays my bills. Music feeds my family. Music is the feel of the strings and the wood under my fingers. But I lose the music. It turns into a job and what was almost in my hand is back flying in the wind like a kite.

Tonight I am almost touching it again. To list the songs and the artists does no justice. It’s the feeling I’ve found. The moment when hope is restored. The beauty of the melody resting with the groove. The dance, the shift, the feeling that life is here.

Life is rhythm. We lay down and we rise. Our hearts beat. We lose the groove and we stumble, we flail. We lose the questions and only find anger and fear.

We lose each other and only find ourselves. And ourselves are not enough. There is no harmony alone. And no rhythm.

But God is in the rhythm. He knew the dark needed the light. He knew the ocean needed the land. He knew the woman needed the man. The melody and the harmony. The kick and the snare. The hand and the drum. The tension and the release. The grave and the sky.

We feel it. The music that moves us goes beyond our frontal lobes and our language. It goes straight into the bloodstream. It wrenches our gut and grabs our heart. The Minor falls and the Major lifts. The baffled King composes “Hallelujah”.

Music is a dead language if you don’t have people you love.

Music is real like love. You hold it like love. You can lose it like love. It is an echo of love. Maybe we like the sad love songs because they make us hope that tomorrow we’ll grab ahold of what always seems just outside our grasp.

Tonight I’ve found my old friends in the rhythm, my wife in the hope of a melody, my girls in the lilt and the twirl.

Tonight I’ve found God in the groove. The pulse that is always there beneath me, above me, behind me, before me, waiting for me to ride within its heartbreaking, breathtaking, dark and beautiful waves.

Read the rest of what he has to say here. And take the time to be moved by music. Turn off everything else, get away from distractions (as much as you can), and let music wash over you. Whether it is Andrew’s music, or Górecki’s Third Symphony (another piece that blew me away again this week), or whatever your preference is, don’t let it stay in the background. Let it remind you of life, of hope, of God. Listen to the music.