Music, waves, movement

A couple weeks ago, I was walking at night on a busy street filled with huge stores and bustling people on my way to Plaza del Sol. I was blasting "One and Only" by Adele and literally felt like the music was inside every part of my body, and I couldn't help not only walking to it, but moving my arms and my head and my shoulders to every beat, picturing a dance to it, scenes in a video clip to it, feeling it in my gut and vibrating in my head until all of a sudden, I started crying. I was walking so fast and I don't know why but for the first time in Spain, nobody was running into me.

I once talked to a friend about these episodes of feeling completely overwhelmed by everything around me--so small and confused and lost, both in space and time. Missing everything, not understanding the "why" to anything, immobilized by the profound lack of sense at the bottom of everything. And he asked me if these episodes ever come without music. Such a simple question. It felt like he broke down a wall. No, they never do. It's always music that instigates the strongest emotional and sometimes physical responses in me. And I know others the feel the same. I don't get it. It must be something so inherent in us, some sort of wiring in our brain that connects the beats and waves that keep us alive to the beats and waves that form our favorite songs. And sometimes, when they flow in a certain way, they unlock cases and swirls of unexpected and seemingly random sensations flow out. Sensations of love, of glee, of nostalgia, sensations we sometimes can't recognize or put a name to, but are as present as anything else.

I don't have a conclusion. I just used to not know what to make of these moments, mini "existential crises" that would come and go. But I don't have to make anything of them. Just embrace them as testimonials to me being human. Also, it's sort of made me realize I have to work in something artistic, something expressive and creative. Because I want to make the things that unlock us as much as I want to experience them.