The Power of Song

Listening: The Sixth Sense

Hearing music is something we as a race have been doing since our primal days. And even more personally, since our conceptions prior to birth we have been hearing. It surrounds us forever and always and is an important part of religion, societies and everyday life. But there is a very define line between hearing music and truly listening.

Anyone can hear music and whether or not we want to, we all do. For example, on the car ride coming home or heading out on a hot summers day, windows rolled down, and you pull up to a red light. Imagine you're in the mood for a quiet ride. Enjoying the sounds of nature and birds and the wind is whistling passed your ear drum. Next thing you know, a silver BMW Roadster stops to your left and the sound of nature is drowned out by Waka Flacka's No Hands. And as you angrily roll your windows up, you're forced to hear Roscoe talk about how he "walks around with pockets that are bigger than his butt". In this situation you were not listening to music, but rather hearing it by force.

But your consent is not the difference between hearing and listening. That would be far too simple and far too short of an essay worth sharing. For example, now imagine that you are back home from school late after a busy day of classes and after school activities. If you are still in school, this may be easy to do. If you are not, however, hopefully you would have gone through enough years where your imagination can recreate the senecio with ease. You already ate your diner and took a calming shower but now you've got stacks of homework that need attending to and you realize that in order to get to be before 3am, much focus is needed to complete all your work. You slide your headphones on through your earphones into your outer ear canal turn on your favorite concentration playlist on Spotify, and get to work. Hours go by and while you complete it, dozens of songs flow through your mind. But still, not a single one is listened to. See, in both situations, the music only triggered eardrum vibrations and took up space in the air.