I walked down my street the other evening, as I have done many a time over the years. This time, though, I caught wind of something that made it different.
The quiet of the place was catchy, made me stop and take notice.
We don’t know how noisy it is, I concluded, until a moment such as the one I had that evening.
We take for granted the kids shooting hoops in the driveway, a car coming down the road, maybe a motorcycle on the highway below, certainly the jets taking their human cargo from here to there; they each make a certain noise. We accept all of that and more, the hundred and one sounds that go into a day adding texture and flavor to our lives. As the song says, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it's gone”.
All the noise of our lives went away to hide behind the curtain of a pandemic. No one is saying for sure when all the noise will return
The title of this piece, “The Music of Life”, comes from a movie based in New York, The City That Never Sleeps. There was little music in the film, just the sounds of city life. In truth, it is the same kind of music that surrounds us all though mostly at a lesser volume. We pay little attention to it.
With purpose in mind, we face a world playing from a blank sheet of music, blank save for a few dots here and there, a sharp or flat maybe to spice things up a bit. The music of life has taken a forced leave of absence. We’re not sure when it will return but it will be most welcome by its audience.
