My roommate recently asked me one of the deepest questions I have ever been asked. I play guitar and I sometimes get hooked on playing the same thing over and over again, trying to perfect a talent I know I will never be great at. Sometimes I play it repeatedly even though I don’t necessarily need to keep practicing, but just because I find the way the strings twang together beautiful. I can play the same little riff over and over again for an hour and still want to keep playing it.

I was sitting in the room practicing this song I had learned over the summer that I just thought was pretty and she asked me what my life sounded like. Right now, amongst the chaos of college and learning what it means to be independent. If I were to pick a song, or a lyric, or a sound to describe what I feel now, what would that be?

I've been thinking about this for several weeks now, and I can’t seem to forget about this question. Something I had never realized until she asked me this was that I totally associate sounds with memories. Alan Jackson is Christmas, Merle Haggard is a rocking chair at night, Turn Down For What is a plane ride. I have Spotify, so I don't have any songs downloaded permanently on my phone. I realized as we were boarding the plane that I wasn't going to have WiFi for the 8-hour flight that was taking off in about ten minutes. As I was franticly trying to figure out how I could get any kind of music on my phone in ten minutes, I somehow got Turn Down for What and a random John Mayer song miraculously downloaded. So now, every time I fly, I have this weird urge to listen to Turn Down for What. Even when I listen to it now, I can feel my back pain from the uncomfortable seat and smell the peanuts and the gross feet of the guy sitting next to me.

My immediate family has always loved music. It’s something we’ve always bonded over. I remember the day I decided I was going to try and learn how to play the guitar off of YouTube and any stray chord books I could find around the house. It was an old, old guitar that had been sitting in our coat closet for who knows how long.

I remember when it all clicked; that moment when I understood how strumming worked and how to move from chord to chord smoothly and how to change strum patterns with the different parts of the song and it was like magic. It all of a sudden made so much sense and I wanted to play every song I’d ever listened to because now it was like I got to participate in this thing that I’d already loved so much. Now it wasn’t so far away.

So, to answer my roommate’s question, I’d have to say that my life right now sounds like a show tune. Kind of this organized chaos with dramatic interjections and a huge orchestra in the background, encouraging the vocalists, lifting them up as they step onto this new stage to sing this new song to say something hopefully profound and entertaining.

I believe that we’ve all been given some sort of way to participate in music, whether that’s singing, playing instruments, writing the lyrics, dancing to the songs, or even just listening. It’s something that’s powerful and important and can give us a new perspective for others and for ourselves.