Weight of Sound

When people hear their favorite song on Pandora or any other devise that provides the sounds of this world, they act out, start talking about how much they “die” every time they hear the song, or somehow they mention something about that song. Then after a short conversation about who loves the song the most, the entire car turns into a karaoke stage as the occupants try their best to attempt to hit the labyrinth of notes blasting through the speakers. One thing that sticks out in this situation is that everyone in the car has a moment together which enlightens them about each other, because music bridges the gap between people to bring them together.
I believe in the weight of sound. Music is incorporated so much into our daily lives, one can hardly last an hour without hearing some form of music or rhythm floating through the atmosphere. Listening to a variety of music informs one of the history and cultural background or just one individual because music is the silent language that fills the gap of realization and understanding that can’t be filled with just words. Once people start bridging this gap, they start growing closer together and develop close friendships regardless of race or religious affiliation. An absurd amount of sound binds this world and holds it together and one of the most powerful sounds is silence.
Communication done within the stark beauty of silence which consist only of sounds coming from musical instruments conveys the deepest level of the art of communication. The summer before I began the seventh grade, I started taking guitar lessons at Yancey Music Center and stopped the summer before my junior year. My teachers name was Mike O’Brian and I took lessons from him for a little over three years. Through the days, Mike and I became great friends, to the point that we sometimes would exchange words. I would arrive, he would meet me in the front room, and then we proceed back into a small six by six room and sit down. Words have yet to be exchanged as we bring our guitars into our laps. He would look at me and begin to strum a rhythm and my task was to improvise a solo on top of it. Within the first few seconds, we were both lost in harmonious overlapping of sound. Once we were lost, thought became impossible and all we could do was act on the music because thought would cause delay and interruption. We would “trade off” and swap roles playing the rhythm and improvising solos on top of the rhythm. This exchange would go on for the entire thirty minute lesson and it made the time go by in a few seconds. Once the time was up, we found ourselves again and walked out of the room. “See you next week, Andrew.” was all he would say because the silence would fill in all the rest of the words. When I would return the next week we would either exchanged words and I learned a new song, improved on an old one, or the silence would reappear and we would lose ourselves in the blending sounds.
Just as sound, including silence, brought Mike and me to become friends, it leads the people of world to connect with each other and bridge the gap of hate because people from every walk of life can join together and enjoy one type of sound or share knowledge of the vast sounds that encompass the world with each other. This would allow people to connect on multiple levels even though some can’t understand the language of others, the words are not the important part but the sound in the background that make the words sound beautiful is what should be focused on. It’s the sound that brings people together and for this reason it has weight.