If music be the food of love...

Due to a pleasant surprise, I am now officially a music teacher. As thrilled and relieved as I am, I'm also faced with a couple important questions: Will I have to start wearing bright red jumper dresses and embarrassingly chunky jewelry? Probably not. Oh Lordy, I hope not.

But that's not what concerns me the most. (Shocking, I know!) Throughout my college career, I was required to write numerous papers on exactly why I feel music is important to every child's life. And for years, even though I knew I wanted to pursue music for the rest of my life, I could never explain why. I usually spat out some over-dramaticized lecture on how music is the universal language. Which I still believe is true, but that's not why I spent four years studying, and another three going through a parade of rejected job-applications and interviews. So after seven years, I feel I must ask myself this same question: why music?

Music was like a second language in my house growing up. There wasn't a day that went by that I didn't sing and dance with my family. And now, music has become just as natural in my daily life as sleeping and eating. And at times, it feels just as crucial to my well-being. I get crabby if I haven't sung for a while, much like I get irritable when I'm hungry or tired. I feel that where self-expression is concerned, music starts where language stops. It's just like that old quote, "Music is love in search of a word". Words can only go so far when expressing sorrow, anger, joy, celebration. When you hear Beethoven's 6th or Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, without a word you know exactly what they were feeling. It's also crucial to the reflection and movement of a culture. Can you imagine a movie, commercial, tv show, party, night on the town, wedding, funeral, etc. without music? Why should I deprive others of this amazing emotional and cultural outlet?

Kermit the Frog once said, "Yeah, well, I've got a dream, too. It's about singing and dancing and making people happy. It's the kind of dream that gets better the more people you share it with." Damn right. Cheesy, but damn right. So I need to stop over-thinking and just enjoy the fact that I get to do what I want to do. Why music? Why the hell not:)