". . .they have no music there.  It doesn't exist.  Do you know what that's like?  No lullabies, no love songs.  All my life I thought I was crazy.  That I had ghosts in my head or something.  Simply because I could hear music.  Of course I didn't know it was music. All I knew was that it was something beautiful and - and painful - and right.  And I was the only one who could hear it."

- the Host speaking of his home dimension in the Angel episode "Over the Rainbow"

I had never put that thought into words: that music is something beautiful and painful and right. It's the painful part that got me. It's so true. Sometimes, music just makes your soul ache. But it's a hurts so good type thing.

What causes that? Is it the lyrics? Is it the plaintive wail of an instrument? A minor chord? A sustain? A resolve? What?

{Random bit of irony here; I just had to turn off the music I was listening to - Delerium's "firefly" song - because it was soothing the savage beast. I mean to say, I couldn't articulate how music can be painful while a soothing song was playing. Go figure.}

What I know is this: when I listen to the Waterdeep song "Hush," whether it's live at a concert, or on a cd, or our band covering it, or me alone in my room with my guitar, there is a yearning inside. 6/8 time. G, Em7, Em7/F#... "When you feel like the days just go on and on and on..." and something inside of me is swaying to not just the beat, but to something bigger. Bigger than this song. Beyond these chords and words. And it's not filling a whole inside me, it's revealing an empty place, but somehow shining a ray of hope in there at the same time. And maybe that's just me. Maybe the song doesn't do that to anybody else.

I know that's not the case with the Jeff Buckley song "Hallelujah." Lots of people are affected by that song. I was at the 11th Hour's messageboard & several of the members were talking about that song. Anytime several 11th Hour denizens agree on something, I check it out. They've got good taste. I downloaded "Hallelujah" off Morpheus and they are not wrong. It is haunting and beautiful and it strikes upon something deep inside. The day after the attacks on the World Trade Center, CNN was showing a montage of all the candlelight vigils being held in New York City, and that was the song playing in the background. It was right. ". . .a broken hallelujah."

And there's a story Beth from Hanoi told at church one time. I don't remember the details, but I remember the importance. She's a missionary and she was talking about when a new ethnic group has some people that become Christians. It is a slow process to translate the Bible into a new language, but it's not like the people who have found something they were looking for are going to sit around and wait. They go ahead and start having church. And so some people translated some hymns into their language for them. And that was nice and all, but it was the songs they wrote themselves that really touched them. One guy was talking about the hymns and he said, yeah, they were nice. But the music indigenous to his ethnic group - about that music he said "it makes me cry."

And so, yeah, not much of an anecdote there, cause I can't remember enough of what Beth said to make a coherent point, but I'm going to keep going anyway. There's good music and there's nice songs and then there's the music of our hearts... the songs that make us cry and we don't know why they do. It's just something beautiful. And painful. And right.