"Without music, life would be a mistake"
Friedrich Nietzsche wasn't exactly an optimistic man. Remembered for such classic one-liners as "God is dead" and "to live is to suffer", he isn't the kind of guy you'd want to make a speech at your wedding. Compared to these quotations, his opinions on music juxtapose drastically.
When you stop and think about it (which I do a lot) there is very little that every human has in common. Most of us enjoy a good story, making a fuss of cats and sending ugly snapchats, but there's usually an exception. Music is universally loved, and therefore utterly unique.
‘Music’ is a broad term, though. I’m not suggesting that you play Turn Down For What to a room full of pensioners. Equally, Beethoven’s 7th Symphony is not adequate for a drive to theatre with your friends. I learnt this the hard way. Let’s not forget, some music can divide people just as easily as it can bring them together. However, consider a song like Bohemian Rhapsody, which is known and loved by people regardless of their differences in age, in singing ability, in personality and background. Music is a unifying force, with the unparalleled ability to evoke emotion and bring people together. There’s a reason why almost all countries have a national anthem.
Music permeates into every aspect of our lives, and yet we never get bored of it. My dad blasts out Michael Jackson on a Sunday morning in the same way he has for 30 years. I hope in 30 years my kids will be woken up to the sound of me singing along to A Day To Remember, Woodkid and Green Day. I know that by this point these bands will probably have been relegated to the position of “ancient bands no one cares about” by the youthful generation, but if there’s one thing music can do, it’s endure.
Another thing I love about music is that we can never fully understand it. How is it that a variety of seemingly random sounds, played in a certain order, at a certain pitch and to a specific beat, can turn a bad day into a good one? All of us have songs which make us feel great, which make us feel morose, ones which take us back to the best of memories, ones which make us irresistibly think of a certain person, ones that make the hairs on the back of our necks stand up and salute. I love the fact that I can be sat in a university dorm room 100 miles from Ash, and a single song can take me home. The phenomenon of music is not a comprehendible one, and never will be. The idea of a group of scientists in lab coats conducting experiments on Nevermind is laughable. I think it’s important that there are still a few aspects of life that remain a mystery.
So listen to music; really listen. When you’re really focusing on the music you’re listening to, you are truly living in the moment, and that’s an incredibly hard thing to do. Although music is a love that we share with billions, everyone’s musical palette is idiosyncratic. I feel like a lot of people feel slightly ashamed of their music tastes, and that should never be the case. Whatever you’re into, be it rock, rap, house, pop, reggae or post-60s-progressive-neu-punk-metal-crunkcore, love it, and dance like nobody is watching. Believe it or not, Nietzsche had something to say about that, too:
“Those who were seen dancing were considered insane by those who could not hear the music”.
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