~The Audience~ A Poem on Music

I am twisting, coursing, spiraling, and flourishing, as one pitch tumbles into the next.

I am humankind’s most dynamic electro-chemical dance. Every nerve, neuron, and cell, fully inundated.

I am hearts racing, palms sweating, hands shaking, and tears falling.

I am the transcendent fire that surges through each vessel and every vein when the heart cries out in exaltation.

I am the thunderous pounding of the Shiva Tandava. In Divine Bliss, I dance the world to the ground.

I am both the vast blackness of broken hearts, and the extraordinary healing of spirits’ reborn.

I am the delicious buzz in your bones when the melody soars.

I am ecstasy unimagined. I am inspiration. I am sheer joyous elation.

I am home.

~

Sometimes the experience comes in waves: rushing and roaring in a cyclical chase with itself. Sometimes it’s subtle, yet wholly pervasive, stirring imaginations of cosmic radiation spreading evenly throughout the observable universe.

In this space, I become struck through the heart by the enormity of where I stand. The fluttering membranes tucked neatly inside of my headphones fluctuate with extraordinary fidelity, and I marvel as... all at once, it seems that every mind which has contributed to musical production throughout time, smashes into my body at terminal velocity. Composers, scientists, inventors, theorists, instrumentalists, vocalists, producers, audio engineers... along with every single soul who supported the dreams of those makers who have cumulatively created an experience that we can each share, here and now. The debt we owe is incalculable...

~

So, who then, am I?

I am the becoming of every note in every song as it pours from the creative source.

I am the reason, the refrain, and the resolution.

Who am I?

In all of my fierce and fervid glory...

I am, the Audience.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As an exceptionally talented playwright once lyrically committed to paper,

“Look around, look around at how lucky we are to be alive, right now.” - Lin Manuel Miranda

And how lucky are we?

Lucky that we each happened to be dropped on the planet to visit the experience of life at this exact point in time.

“What twist of fate has brought us, to roads that run so near?” Memoro de la Stono – Distant Worlds – Nobuo Uematsu

Lucky, I think, that we can fall hopelessly for that spicy experience of listening to, and hearing, with some manner of deep and primal complexity, a full body-wracking encounter with song... beyond even where word and pitch alone can take us. 

Irreversibly connected, the audience breathes as much life into any work as the artist. A piece never shared becomes a lifeless page, never to be adored, loved, or cherished.

So, I say to anyone who took the time to read my ramblings, greet and value the Divine in one another, for every unassuming face has a name... and every name carries a little bit of God within.

Thanks for your time.