Where is Music?

I've written a good number of posts on light; searching for the light, and the absence of light – blindness. Physical light, metaphorical light. For the time being, and as I prepare for a special post that should be released very soon, I bring to attention something of another dimension – noise. Or even better – music.

From a physics perspective, sight and sound are two extremely different concepts. The transverse electromagnetic wave that requires no medium to travel through (light), compared to the vibrations of particles in the longitudinal wave that cannot travel through a vacuum (noise).

Noise is a beautiful thing. It allows us to communicate, to perceive. Noise is all around us. And when we control the pitches, hold noise by its reins – we have music – beyond the beauty of simple noise.

Music is all around us too. The radios playing in the mall. CD's in the cars. The piano teacher next door. Siblings singing in the shower. Legally downloaded tracks playing on the computer. Earbuds in our ears.

But that's not what I mean by where is music? I'm speaking about the music in us. Within us. The songs that get "stuck" in our minds, the soundtracks that play when we walk home in the drizzling rain when our iPod battery dies. The background music that plays when we have time to ourselves, when we write, when we're bored, and when we listen to… the sound of silence.

Where is this music? Perhaps it's a little too quick to simply conclude it's in our minds. We often say we have a song stuck in our head; it's a common thing to see on cartoons as well. Music notes pass through one ear, swirl around in the head, and exit out the other ear. We hear these sounds, this music, and are able to translate it into our minds with the miracle of the human ear, our own antenna to the world around us.

But I think music goes a step further than our minds. Music can transport us into different worlds, guide us through emotions, and touch us in ways that nothing else can. It stays with us, flowing with its graceful notes through every inch of our body. And it beats without failure, every moment we live, and even a while after we die.

The spirit of music – living in our hearts. Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub.

Question: We know our collective terms. A school of fish, a streak of tigers. What do we use to call a group of notes?