“i love music too!”

i hear it so often nowadays

everyone is a music lover

of all styles, mediums, and genres

but not even close to really meaning it.

these people don’t lose friends to Mahler

or throw away lovers for J.S. Bach

or make excuses about family dinners and errands when asked to go out

just for a few more hours alone with a bottle of whiskey and their guitar.

they rest easy at the end of their days.

they don’t lie in their beds for hours

fighting sleep just because they know

sleep would mean no more vinyl until morning.

they’re just ordinary people

with ordinary lives

and ordinary likes forming ordinary sentences

never knowing how it feels to drown in extraordinary love.

if that’s really what loving music is

then what does that make people like me?

people who have a hard time settling for like

choosing instead love hurled with reckless abandon.

what does that make the musicians?

the people who spend days lost in dirty pianos and diminished fifths

who spend nights fiending for fermatas, double-flats, and triple-fortes

consumed by passion instead of simply consuming the world.

what does that make the dancers?

the people who are told to sit still and shut up

who are ridiculed for being born with more genius in their feet

than most people have in their souls.

the singers, songwriters, and composers

the listeners, lovers, and writers

the savants, prodigies, and virtuosos

and the ones who couldn't hum a note to save their life.

what does that make us?