¨If art is how we decorate space, music is how we decorate time¨ -Unknown. Without music, time would be bland and empty. Nothing to wake me up and nothing to lull me to sleep. Music gives my regular life an intricate soundtrack. Adding lyrical masterpieces to the most mundane tasks makes an unimaginable difference. One moment I’m sitting doing hours of homework I know I won't remember next week, and the next I'm listening to my favorite song I'll remember for life. 

Many moons ago, a guy and a girl attended the same concert. Sometime in between the jumping and screaming of the lyrics, they bumped into each other. They made small talk, exchanged numbers, and eventually grew to become my mom and dad. Within the hour I was born my mom sang me happy birthday and cradled me while listening to her favorite album. From before I was old enough to learn my ABCs, I can recall my dad on his guitar, carefully piecing together chords to strum me to sleep. My mom's delicate lullabies became the soundtrack of my childhood. I would blast music disregarding the rest of the house's silence. Now, I go to concerts where I can be caught howling the lyrics until my lungs are dry and my throat becomes raw and sore. Attending school dances with friends, jumping to the beat until my feet ache. But most days, I can be found listening to music in the stillness of my room, stretched out in bed, the songs spilling from my headphones from the volume being as high as possible. 

Music tells me what I'm feeling even when I don't know. When I feel a pit of sadness so strong it physically hurts, there's a song that can cradle me like a lullaby. When I'm so overjoyed I can't string together the words that describe it, there's a song that lays those words out on my lap, for me to put together. It's said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but I think a song truly is. Even though there are only so many lyrics and tempos that can be sewn together, the memories they hold are far stronger. These minutes of immersive beats and lyrics hold unfathomable memories, with just one listen taking me back to a moment in time I thought I long forgotten. Music connects the living with the dead, listening to a song once beloved by someone now long past, making the lively rhythm feel like their forgotten heartbeat. 

My life without music is no life at all. There would be no concert for my parents to meet. No songs to messily dance around with friends. Nothing to cradle my good memories while clinging to the bad ones. No new memories to create. An alternate universe void of music would be incapable of housing me.