Love's the Language ... Of Magic
One of my favorite conversations with my dad was the night before I began my study of music theory.
He was a clarinetist, musicologist, and music history professor, studying at New England Conservatory in the 60s where he had phenomenal opportunities to see, hear, and perform with the likes of Bernstein and Copland and Stravinsky. He worked as an usher at Symphony Hall in Boston, no doubt experiencing countless legendary performances.
I was so excited to begin my study of theory, in the university music department where he was the chairman.
I remember telling him I couldn’t wait to discover why it was that some chords and melodies moved the deepest places in me - creating sensations I could physically feel - and others had no such effect.
What it was in these particular chord structures and movements of notes that resonated to my very core.
I will never forget his knowing smile as he looked me in the eyes and said “Oh, you will never figure that out.“
He said that no such answers were to be found in theory ... It was simply magic.
I’ve thought so often about that conversation, as so very much music crosses my path here in Nashville, and there continue to be those particular pieces that stop me in my tracks and bring something to shimmering life in me.
The harmonies I get to sing on Sunday mornings ... Flowing effortlessly from I don’t even know where, on songs I’ve never heard in my lifetime.
Every one of Matthew Perryman Jones’ exquisite melodies.
And this absolute masterpiece from Switchfoot out this week.
“Love’s the language,
Love’s your native tongue.”
This song just blows me away on every single level.
I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered a more powerful marriage of a piece of work and a moment in time ... Its deep wisdom about our current conversation and who we truly are as humans is breathtaking.
It’s also musically stunning.
Every moment of sound is incredible ... I truly have no words.
My dad was so right.
This song has every bit of that shimmering life I was hoping to understand in my study of theory, and it is not the least bit the kind of sound in which I would’ve expected to find it.
It is simply magic.
This song is going to do things.
“I want the world to sing in her native tongue,
Maybe we can learn to sing along,
To find a way to use our lungs for love,
Not the shadows.”
My heart is unimaginably grateful.