I don’t think I could live without music.

I’ve been collecting my favorites for years now: 

CDs, vinyl, cassette tapes, full mp3 players;

A lot of Japanese Breakfast, some Wye Oak, and the soundtracks for Red Dead Redemption, Outer Wilds, Interstellar.

There’s a lot more, too, and I keep it all in a cardboard box in my room. 

Because what is life without music? Even plants and animals appreciate it. 

Without music, there would be no glimmer or shine to life,

and the noise of the world would feel deathly silent 

and even though there are friends and family and acquaintances,

half of life would simply be gone.

It’s melodramatic, but just imagine,

every single song that you’ve ever heard,

instead simply white space, hollowness; a sentence without punctuation.

What an empty life it would be to lead.

My mom’s favorite song, White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane,

the hymns that they sing at church, maybe

an old Prince record so warped that it barely plays;

I can’t imagine life without hearing the song

Soft Sounds from Another Planet by Japanese Breakfast,

where the soft, swaying sound of waves

crescendos into a catharsis;

or the deep, resounding guitar of

Chapel by Nicole Dollanganger;

or the brittle, unsettling notes of the song

Werewolf by Fiona Apple.

Music is a universal language that we all speak, whether we know it or not.

Music allows you to search for and feel something that is unfathomably bigger than yourself.

Music can connect us to something otherworldly, or it can ground us:

reminding us that we are and forever will be 

a part of the noisy world around us. 

The world without music would be like the world in winter:

always dull and muffled and still. 

Like a snail’s vacant shell, once occupied with life 

now simply an object, carried without aim or discretion

down and deep into a murky stream.  

But a world bursting with music is vivid and full of color; 

like spring, both unpredictable and promising, 

simultaneously tangible and ethereal;

a rich, brilliant, and fully lucid existence.

I seriously know I couldn’t live without that.