Someone asked me once how i thought i'd explain music to someone who can't hear it
and i didn't have an answer
because all the time they gave me to think about it, i wondered how i'd explain music to someone even if they could hear.
There is no word that encapsulates music. There's no description that's not trite.

So i started thinking that I should have become a musician because chords don't have to come with a definition because
played alone a chord is a chord
pretty or harsh or flat it's just a sound but when it's in a song
man it means something intangible

words are too chiseled and petrified but music is like mercury
ephemeral
and notes don't have to be subjects or objects or pronouns and riffs can end in prepositions if you want them to
and now it seems strange to me that music is written on bars because words are the things that trap you as they themselves are trapped in the cheap ink of a dictionary that smudges your thumbs as you turn its pages looking for that word that won't quite fit anyway

so i wish i played the piano

I'd play barefoot, of course
to feel the curve of the cool brass pedal on the soft bottom of my foot
and it'd be sunny out
or raining
or some gray clouded in-between
and i'd close my eyes and sway as i hit highs and lows and black keys and white ones and I can taste them on my fingers liketoo rich chocolate cake
and other soggy metaphors that don't do justice to the melancholy and the hope
and that spice that you just can't identify because i read the dictionary one bored summer and trust me, the perfect word just isn't there

then next, i would learn the violin

i'd learn how to wiggle my fingers just right to get that wavering sound,
you know,
the one that when the note is deep sounds like an old man speaking
and those strings would vibrate so quickly as i arched the horsehair bow across them
playing half notes, quarter notes, semidemiquaver notes climbing higher and higher up the arm of the instrument, my fingers hopping and knowing, just knowing which spot was which note and eventually reaching the pinnacle, peaking crescendo that no other instrument can come close to
the one that feels like release or sunshine after forty days of rain or rain after forty days of sunshine and
bursting

and there's no way to say it really
there's no appropriate word or anything that's not some overused cliché about how your chest swells out and you can feel your heart growing as the music seeps inside
and how it aches, in a good way, but there's so much more to it that i just can't
i just cant voice it
but i think, if i were a musician, i could play it for you.
And only if i could make you feel those notes
would you understand what music means