idioma primero

Well, so like I said, this summer is CRAZY. I have so many babysitting gigs I don't know what to do with myself. Still, life goes on. :P Much more hectically than before.
I have been thinking about music. Right now I am listening to a choral arrangement, which prompts me to tell you a story. A few summers ago I was a councilor at a summer camp in Spain, just north of Barcelona. I worked there for a total of 4 weeks. The camp was full of music. There were songs every evening around the campfire-sub (there was a drought that year, so no campfires allowed by the dept.) and every morning before breakfast to get the kids (and their councilors) woken up. We had a bagpipe, and flutes, and bass, and guitars, and a violin, and many, many voices- loud, soft, happy, reluctant, beautiful, off-key- you name it. Also, I sang to myself as usual, and there was praise music on Sundays, when we had our church service. But though our joie de vivre and worship was honest, there would seem to be some quality lacking in the music. I would not have known this but for one morning (a morning of rest, because it was between camps). By that time I was a kitchen hand, and so shared a cabin with my friend instead of a tent with 8 kids and another councilor. We were packing our belongings in preparation for the move to our next assigned cabin, when the most beautiful sound hit my ears. During camps, usual wakeup song was some atrocious kids' song about a rooster with a banjo, sung terribly off-key. So on non-camp mornings the designated DJ played something different. On that particular morning he chose a simple string and wind arrangement in major key, that just struck me, right in the heart (for lack of a better, less sentimental way of putting it). It filled, all of a sudden, the lack I had felt in all of the music of the past four weeks. I stood still and listened, hand over heart. At that moment it might have been one of the most beautiful sounds I'd ever heard.
So I know, you see. I know that music speaks to the soul. Even if it's not as amazing as that one camp experience of mine. My Dad's music, that I have known forever (or so it seems) still runs through my head, and I use it to express what I'm thinking, or to change its course.
But music can also grow stale. It can grow old and lose meaning. That, I think, is partially why we write so many new songs. And of course, greed in the corporate world. But I'm not discussing that. I have a few other musical observations, but it's late, and I've run out of steam. I'll be philosophical about it next time.