i me mine

i figured it out. i now know how to tell if i really love something or someone. simply, my love manifests itself in an undying interest in the subject of my affection. moreover i am compelled to understand that subject as deeply and wholly as i possibly can. that is how i love. that is how i know what and who i love.

the barometer i used to come to this conclusion is my first, and up until now my one true love: music. ever since i’ve been able to conjure coherent thoughts i’ve loved music. i didn’t choose music, it chose me.

the love of music i have is only unique in that it is infused with the nuances of how i love. beyond that it is neither novel, nor terribly uncommon for people to posses equal or greater love for music then i do. i’ve been lucky as i have crossed paths with some great, but more importantly passionate musicians. because of that i’ve been able to witness the routes others have taken in their pursuit of music. everything from professional touring musicians, to pursuing work at choral festivals in italy, to just listening and being consumed by music.

then i compare that with the path i took. early on i was always interested in the elements of music. what made it sound that way? how could i learn to do that? that took the form of a fascination with theory. learning scales and intervals wasn’t boring for me as it was for most others. and i was good at it. i just always wanted to know more. the more i understood, the more i wanted to understand. in my mind the best way for me to do that was in an academic setting. as soon as i started high school i already knew i wanted to study music at university. during those high school years i was bands, jazz and concert bands at school and a punk/ska band outside of school. i loved being in every group i was in and i miss them all dearly but that wasn’t enough. playing music tells you how music feels. it doesn’t speak to the counterpoint of the various elements. that’s what i always wanted to get at.

a university degree in music later and i am no less interested in music and despite having a fundamental understanding of how music is constructed i feel only marginally more enlightened. truly this love affair will last a life time. i want to know so much more about music. my questions are no fewer then they were when i was 14. i possess those answers but those answers in turn have produced a new series of questions.

more to the point. why did i chose to study music like this? why didn’t i form a band and try to make it that way? until recently i listened to music pretty infrequently, certainly less then most of my friends. why didn’t my love of music cause me to listen to music non-stop?

i don’t actually have answers to these questions. more so it’s in asking those questions that i arrived at the insight that made me start writing this.

i have an unquenchable thirst for insight and understanding. music is what i’ve hungered for firstly and most thoroughly so naturally i would seek to understand it inside and out.

it’s this formula that explains why i love (or would love) a person. or at least how that would reveal itself to me. in a desire to not only know that person, but understand them wholly. it is in that search for understanding that i become passionate about a person, become attracted to them and all other accoutrement that comprise love.

yet another piece of insight that music has revealed.