why I like sad songs

Music is an interesting thing… it’s something that you can define, I suppose, but it’s much harder to explain.  I like to sit and think about music sometimes.  I don’t even know why the way that certain things sound means so much to us.  Music doesn’t even really exist unless it’s being played and I always thought that was cool.  Music is the ultimate paradox.  I can think of nothing else that has had more of an effect on my life… really nothing has even had the same effect.  It seems like everything pales in comparison.  When I listen to a beautiful voice singing a soft song I get a chill that runs through me.  I suppose in effect it’s a lot like the chill I get when my sock slip suddenly on a smooth floor… but it somehow means more than that.  It’s got a weight to it.  It makes me feel truly happy inside.  Music even stirs ones emotions in a way that absolutely nothing else can.  In a way I don’t feel like I’d be able to feel emotions at all if it weren’t for music.  It reminds me what it feels like to be a person living and breathing and feeling the world around me.  Even if there are no words it’s comforting to hear the sound.  It give me a sense of connection with things I might otherwise have thought seperate from me.  I like sad songs the best.  A song that I can listen to, and for no real reason I just start to cry, because it means that much to me.  I don’t know why… I can’t begin to frame the question.  Its as if there is no answer, but the music still exists without being.  The sad songs are the best.  The most true.  The most sincere.  One day we will all be sad, and the sadder we are at that moment, the happier everything else in our life will seem.  It’s the sadness that defines what isn’t sad and I like that.

Thirty spokes converge upon a single hub;
It is on the hole in the center that the use of the cart hinges.

We make a vessel from a lump of clay;
It is the empty space within the vessel that makes it useful.

We make doors and windows for a room;
But it is these empty spaces that make the room livable.

Thus, while the tangible has advantages,
It is the intangible that makes it useful.

~Tao Teh Ching~