“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent”
― Victor Hugo

Learning to play piano as a teenager, my friends would come up to me and try to talk to me while I was playing. I would be thinking of replies so clearly that I was surprised my friend didn’t answer.

She would smack my arm and say, “Answer me!”

Didn’t I? I was thinking it.

I love words, I love reading and writing. Words and music are how I understand myself. They are not the same, though. I wouldn’t know how to make a diagram of it, but words and music don’t completely overlap. Music lives in a different plane of communication.

Music can express things and heal me in places that words cannot touch.

Many years past in the destruction of my first marriage, I played my antique piano to find my way through. I didn’t know who I was anymore. The meter of the music I created were the railroad ties measuring a path through.

Measure by measure, I was able to sort the chaos from formless and void into my first days. Those dark days in my cinderblock apartment were safe after many years. Protected and trembling from the escape.

Music moves and carries me as I find myself in a new safe place. My hands on the keys, little finger movements probe the tangles. Little strokes finding knots, lining up what allows the harmony.

The beat goes on, relentless but merciful too. No breaks to go make it perfect. And it doesn’t matter because this part can be better than the last. Sweet sounds now forgive the ones I broke before.

Words can be too heavy for the task. I only see darkly what I’m aiming for.

Music walks with me, pushes me along. My long companion and partner. Time might lie on my hands painfully but music raises it up.