The music

There was a small tune.

There were all other tunes.

In every key. Playing all at once. And each needed a story to play to. But to hear the one small tune we found a part unconfused. In so finding we experience:

There is a war.

Silence and cacophony.

Scarcity, rather nothing at all against everything that could be. The only thing that gives them life is truth. The only thread that gives them sense is beauty. The only thing that satisfies is a tune put to rest.

To the past we see it clearer by what we won't forget. The future is only the hope that the sounds that spoke to our souls were not lying.

The beat is always the true. It is both hard and gentle. Constant and unending. But without a melody there is only the components of all things hammered out in its own time.

The chorus is the call of meaning. The religion of unexperience: A wailing of lament, or a triumph of forgotten battles.

The bridge walks a tightrope to something new. Only to make that old religion make sense. But now it is no longer religion. But belief owned.

That one small tune of a heartbeat in truth, beauty in reality and hope that it can grow.

The afterlife is all of this. But hope is no more. Only the truth of what is. And that is music in the face of Music itself.

© Jesse Selin