The Music we Carry
This morning I’ve been writing with a quiet piano concert playing in the background. It’s one of those Tiny Desk performances where nothing demands your attention, but somehow everything settles into place.
It made me realize that music has always been there.
When I was little, my father would put on records whenever we had electricity. Pink Floyd. Chicago. Blues. Rock and roll. Those songs became part of the landscape of childhood, as familiar as the smell of wood smoke or fresh-cut hay.
My father wasn’t a musician in the formal sense, but music lived comfortably around him. He would pick up a harmonica now and then, or fiddle with a guitar. When I was about twelve, he gave me one of my own because he hoped I might learn to play. I tried. Over the years I’ve tried the piano, the saxophone, a few different instruments, but none of them came easily. I’ve often thought that’s curious, because while I may never have learned to make music with my hands, I’ve always carried it somewhere much deeper. Listening has become its own kind of instrument.
As a teenager, it was the soundtrack of the 80s. Madonna. Prince. Cyndi Lauper. Michael Jackson. We danced. We all danced. I was at our high school prom last week and one of the students said, “We don’t really dance anymore.” It made me a little sad. Dancing wasn’t something we planned. Music simply pulled us onto the floor.
During my marriage, music narrowed. Country music filled the house because that’s what my husband loved. It wasn’t wrong—it just wasn’t mine.
After the divorce, when everything felt uncertain, music found me again in an unexpected way. A man from Lebanon whom I’d met online began sending me MP3s from every corner of the world. French chansons. Opera. Jazz. Music from decades I’d never explored. Looking back, the friendship became complicated in ways I didn’t fully understand at the time. But I still remember the gift he gave me: he opened a door I didn’t know existed.
Since then, I’ve become my own curator. My own music person.
Every so often someone sends me a song that says what words can’t. I’ve always loved that. Music has its own language. Sometimes it reaches places that conversation never quite can.
Maybe that’s why it has always mattered so much to me. It feels less like something humans invented and more like something we discovered—like another language nature has been speaking all along, and every generation learns to hear it in its own way.
I’ve been listening to this beautiful Tiny Desk concert while I write this morning. If you have a quiet hour today, I’ll leave the link in the comments. I hope it brings you a little peace, too.
