[insert witty phrase]

I think that to ask myself how I experience music in my daily life would only misdirect me because music tends to be my daily life. From the moment I get up I'm listening to something, whether it be relaxing (Oasis' Champagne Supernova comes to mind) or even ambient music (like Boards of Canada) I wake up to music. From there on there are few times throughout the day when I'm not wearing headphones, listening to speakers, or simply humming a song to myself. I think this behavior stems from the fact that my dad hates silence and always has to have some sort of noise in the background. Growing up in that kind of environment, I grew to hate silence to. And I still do - silence freaks me out. Although it's not enough to have just any kind of noise - I need music. Music that adds in some meaningful way to whatever I'm currently experiencing. Furthermore I've been spending more and more time creating my own music, whether it's composing on my guitar or using programs on the computer, I love to take melodies from my head and attempt to translate them into the real world. I usually do this when something particularly stressful or intense is going on in my life, and writing it out and creating a song through it helps me work things out. Not only does it clear my head and give me a means by which I can express my feelings, but it also allows me to create something that I can hopefully come back to in the future and appreciate.

As far as music as an art form goes... it's difficult to say. I suppose we'd all like to think that the musicians are in it for the music as a pure art form, but that's a pretty naive point of view unfortunately. Even artists have to make money to live off of, so when it comes down to it their art has to appeal to a certain market. Not that there aren't varying degrees of individuality. Certainly there are those groups who seem to churn out each year's version of the same old pop song with very little innovation, while on the other hand there are those who are taking instruments and sounds and concepts in completely new and exciting directions. I would say that it has a lot to do with both the perceptions of the listener and the intentions of the artist. If they mean their music to be art, then surely it is so - of course that only holds true if the audience accepts it as art as well, for who is a musician without an audience?

Yet, for all of my rationalizations I think I just have a problem with calling music art. The word art carries a lot of connotations (for me, at least) that I wouldn't want to attribute to music. To me art seems to be something to be looked at, examined and analyzed, but not touched. Where as with music one cannot help but touch. When I hear a song, I become fully immersed in it - experiencing it with the song's creator. I feel what they feel and I know what they know, if only for a brief period. That is why music is culture, influences culture, and can even supercede culture. Music is our ability to express the human condition