Music=Life

I mean, I don’t know how else to say this. Music really is everything. Like a river it is a source, also is a medicine, even could say its magic, or like a drug. You cannot see it but it can massively affect how you feel, it has the power to bring people together, and like painting is is often a signpost to something else. Sometimes I wonder if it would be harder to live without hearing or without sight, I think life without music would be very difficult. Music feels as if you are now in something, perhaps caught in the lapping waves of the frequency of the sound, as though you are in the presence of a painting that strikes you. I react to it with all my senses, I see the sounds of the music as form and colour within my mind, patterns dancing beautifully in my brain. Synesthesia means that my brain involuntarily produces visual information when my ears sense sound. This merging of sensory input enriches my experience of music, making it something I can get so lost in. Music is so essential in painting, I am almost always listening to all kinds of music as loud as I can whilst working. I like to see myself as a sponge absorbing everything and relaying it into what I paint. It comes as a wave, carrying me through my emotions, flicking through memories and connecting my mind to my body. Painting is a dance after all, I am just tracing my movements with paint, and the brush becomes and extension of myself as I move across the surface. Really it is all just recording, but not limited to one thing. Moments of pressure, resistance and control as the paint develops as a song does, or as the mood as the music changes. How can a selection of songs bring me to such heightened emotions, bringing me to tears of joy or pain, how can a song feel as though it holds me, as though it was made just for me. Jamie xx is one of my favourite producers; his latest album is just perfect to me. It resonates on another level, in a space that isn’t quite here but is also everywhere. In September I was able to see him in London, an evening of music that took me out of this world. It was as if the songs were taking me back in time through my life and going through each memory, and holding me through them. Lifting something out of me, taking me home to a place that feels like humans have lost. It is this power that amazes me, thousands of individuals dancing as one, doing something that feels good, good for their bodies and minds. This oneness is what I am chasing, well not chasing but trying to paint. That feeling that cannot be conceptualised, where it is all flowing as one thing. It is what we humans are always trying to express really. An awe and fascination of the complexity and magnificence of life how is this all happening?