The Power of Music

In fact, I am listening to him right now. It’s not addiction because, according to the American Psychiatry Association, addiction is a brain disease that is manifested by compulsive substance use despite harmful consequences and, even though I do feel drawn to his music, I don’t experience any harmful consequences. For that matter, I have found wellness.

I’ll explain. Sometimes, after I have written a post, I enjoy adding at the end of it a link to just one song. I imaging that I am choosing a nice soundtrack that helps the reader to reflect on whatever subject is discussed. It is also a great excuse to spend time listening to new music.

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about sustainability while buying clothes. This led me to search for a song that would profoundly talk about clothing. Yeah, I love getting a bit intense. So after going through some funny ones like Boogie Shoes by KC and the Sunshine Band I eventually crashed against The girl in yellow dress from David’s album Rattle that lock. It turned out to be one of those compositions that climb directly to your favorite’s list: because I love its jazzy style and because the lyrics are a beautiful poem. I don’t know how the composition happened but I would like to blame his writer wife Polly Anne Samson for it. I just adore the romantic idea of a loving couple working together.

Since then I learned lots of things about David Gilmour. Although he is just a part of Pink Floyd history he is considered one of the best guitarists in the world by renowned magazines like Rolling Stone or Guitar World; being responsible for some of the best guitar solo’s ever composed. On top of that, he is an actual aviator (yes, with a plane) and a knight of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. This last achievement might seem useless but it sounds cool at a family dinner.

However, it wasn’t a single song or an interesting life that made me get hooked to David Gilmour music. The best of listening to his art is meditation. Thanks to his music I am learning to enjoy lying down and moving nothing. I might have chosen to be a writer but I am not a sitting-down-person. I am the kind of girl whose body needs to feel exhausted before I feel that I deserve a rest. Just a regular young woman trying to, excessively, proof that ‘yes, we can’. What I mean is that I am one of those who struggle to learn meditation or any other concentration practice. And that’s why I got so excited about his third solo studio album On an Island because it was when I listened to it that I understood I was able to focus. I started listening to the different instruments, one by one and each with its particular pattern. I would pick up a gentle sound and I would concentrate on it as if there were no other instruments. Then I would jump to the next one and let myself go with the flow. After a few songs, I was still there: meditating and motionless but not exhausted.

David Gilmour’s album On an Island has given me not only peace but the capacity to travel within that precious and scary world that is my mind.

SPOTY

MEDIUM