It occurred to me today that music has been so important to me, as it has to many.

I was recently having a conversation with a friend of mine about the concept of ‘waking up with a song in your head’. I was telling this friend of mine that it is a pretty normal occurrence for me to wake up in the morning with a song in my head and I don’t know where it came from. I asked this friend whether or not the same thing ever happens to him.

I don’t know about you, but waking up with a song in my head happens to me on most mornings. This morning, the song just so happens to be If You Leave by OMD. Now, I don’t know where it came from, I don’t know when I last heard that song, and I can’t even remember any off-handed references to the song, or any of its lyrical lines, in the recent past. Apparently, the song was a feature hit from the movie, Pretty in Pink, which I didn’t know until just a few seconds ago. Can’t remember the last time I saw that movie.

So, who knows how this happens to me, but I can’t say that it’s an altogether unpleasant experience, especially if it’s an enjoyable song. Sometimes, it might end up being an annoying song, so I’ll wash it out of my head by listening to some other music.

Last week, on one particular morning, I woke up with On My Own from Les Miserables stuck in my head. It’s my favorite song of the entire play (the best version, IMO, is the Lea Salonga version –> she’s an epic vocalist). The song is sung by Éponine near the beginning of Act II of the play, as Éponine is lamenting the fact that the man that she is crushing on (Marius) doesn’t love her back. That song, so beautifully tragic, can actually wreck my mood if I leave it in my head for very long.

Just one of the ways that music affects me.

* * *

I also happen to be a vocalist, so music is special to me, not only because I love to listen to it, but because I also love to perform it.

The funny thing about that is that I don’t like to listen to recordings of myself. I don’t like the way my voice sounds ‘outside of my head’, even though I do like the way that I sound inside my head. If you think that sounds strange, please hear me out (Get it? Hear me out? Hee Hee).

I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this or not, but your voice –whether it’s your singing voice or your speaking voice– does not sound the same to you as it does to other people. That’s because your voice, inside your head, is modified by the sinus cavity in which the sounds reverberate. Those sinus cavities are in close proximity to your ear, so, when you hear your voice, you are only partly hearing what comes out of your mouth and is picked up by your ears from outside of your head. Another part of what you are hearing, when you hear your voice, is the sound of your voice from the inside.

The sound of your voice is one of the only sounds that you will ever hear that sounds different to you than it does to anyone else.

Interestingly enough, I have been singing as a performer for more than thirty years, and I only recently discovered that I don’t like how everyone else hears me.

Nevertheless, singing has provided me with opportunities that I don’t know if I would have gotten from other places. When I was in the church choir as a young teenager, I learned to respect my elder through the relationships that I forged with the other men in the church choir, many of whom were four or five times my age. I learned to love so many of the great, old hymns by working on them -beginning in that church choir– now going on twenty-five plus years ago.

In fact, the other day, I went through my current church hymnal, to see how many of the hymns I was familiar with; sixty-three of those hymns in that hymnal I was able to recall from the annals of my musical memories.

Then, in college, as I joined one of the most prestigious glee clubs in the nation, I got to see the world because of my singing. I learned more about music in those four years than I’d learned previously, or since. I formed friendships with guys in that glee club that will last for the rest of my life. I performed with groups and in places that I never would have been able to perform otherwise. Singing the Ave Maria in the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, performing the Oedipus Rex opera with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, performing the Carmina Burana with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Maestro Tsung Yeh, these are all performances and experiences that I will always treasure.

Another of the ways that music affects me.

* * *

Music is an art form, of course, and life is better because of the art –because of the beauty– that we are able to incorporate into our lives. I have enjoyed some art forms to greater degrees, and some to lesser degrees, but I have loved no form of art (not even my love of the art of words) as much as I have loved the art of music.

Also, as I close this out, let me say this. I said earlier that “the sound of your voice is one of the only sounds that you will ever hear that sounds different to you than it does to anyone else”. As I was writing that sentence earlier, it occurred to me that we all have a voice. The fact that it sounds different to others than it sound to us is a great metaphor, I think.

Someone needs to hear your voice, to hear your thoughts, to benefit from the kind, gentle, positive words that you could offer to them. Just because your voice doesn’t seem like much to you, it could be a significantly more beautiful sound in the ear of someone who needs to hear what you have to say.

See if you can be someone else’s ‘music’.