Keeping Time

As I think was implicit in my recent post on jazz, I love music. I don't know who doesn't like music (excepting the tone deaf), but I really do love it. It took me a while to get into it, but as I went to college I really fell for it. These days I listen to it all the time. Honestly it's not enough to just listen to it. I mostly have to participate in some way. That often means singing along, at least until I get self conscious. Sometimes I sing in the absence of music, as in the shower.

Often it's less the words that get to me and more the beat. I'll snap my fingers to it, sometimes very vigorously. As with singing, it can happen in the absence of actual music. Sometimes I'm playing it in my head, or trying to write my own song. If I'm working on something of my own, it can get bad. Sometimes I've snapped my fingers long and hard enough to develop blisters, or come close to it. I can feel when that's about to happen, and it's still not easy to resist.

I try then to channel it in some other way. Snapping with my left hand feels strange, and not just because of my old axe blade injury (of the kind that might happen to anyone). It's funny how snapping doesn't seen to happen correctly with the left, considering it doesn't seem like such precision work as writing. Instead of snapping, I may tap. Nothing within my reach is immune to this, including walls, bannisters and more. If seated, I may slap my thigh. If I have something in my hand, I employ it as a drum stick.

With this I don't get too self-conscious. I don't know that people care about snapping, tapping or slapping. If someone acknowledges it, then I do get a little embarrassed, but keep on with it for fear of betraying that. Anyway, it's not the person who is caught acceding to the music who ought to be embarrassed. It's the person who resists it. They say that people dancing only look crazy to those who can't hear the music. Who wants anything to do with those who don't hear the music?