it's noon and i'm about to get lunch when i decide to plug into my laptop and get some revisions done in the last chapter. i pull up itunes and shuffle it a bit, eventually come to the song which is playing in the background as you're reading this. "kanada's death, pt.2 (adagio in d minor)" from the sunshine sountrack, composed by john murphy. a couple seconds and it's building. and then i'm hooked. i'm pulled in and just can't stop writing. my mind's racing.
and this is what i love about music. so many people think of it as this passive sort of ambience that can help you relax or indulge you with something catchy and fun. i guess, in some ways, they're right. but good music, and by "good" i mean GOOD, it's active. it moves you. it's like this car that comes out of nowhere when you're walking down the street, pulls up to the sidewalk and the door just opens. you have no idea who's behind the wheel or where it's going. but, if you truly just let go, you get in and your life is never the same, if only for a few minutes. i've played guitar my entire life and appreciated this even firsthand. plugged in, i'll just start with a slide up the frets, a cool, gentle hammer-on sparking the sweetest blues scale and my fingers come alive. they end up in grungy, power chords or the truest, single notes plucked in a lead. wherever they end up, it's just right. it's good. it's true. in that moment. and, in that moment, i'm alive.
"Then something happens. Windows down, the wind beats a tune against my hand as it cuts in and out of the air beside me. I'd close my eyes if I could, but I hear it still just the same. It starts off slow and grand, this orchestra rising up from a cold mute, soon a bright, warm sun shining in the background. Then the air comes in bits, in a rhythm thats driving along to the tires spinning beneath us. Sweetly ethereal, it's like I'm flying through every fantastic landscape ever imagined, on some old ship sailing into battle, dancing in the rain and watching the miracle of birth all at once. Its fucking magical. And thats when it hits me. Im alive." - closing lines from chapter 14 in MAKEGOOD
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