Whenever I go on a business trip alone I find myself blissfully consumed with thoughts of family and my beloved wife. I find that the trips don’t get easier and that I miss my family more and more. I truly hate being away from them. I hate missing out on things that are important to them, it has happened so often in my lifetime. The other thing that happens is that I spend a lot of time contemplating the meaning of things or how something might apply to my life.
On this particular trip I watched a 2 part series on Elvis. It was interesting an I learned much about Elvis that I hadn’t known before. What I really enjoyed about it though is that it got me thinking about music which in turn got me thinking about Brian. One of my favorite things that I learned from Brian is that music is more than just words accompanied by instruments. Not all, but much of it is complex and has meaning. It is one of those things that people like me take for granted and truly can’t appreciate the wonder of it without intentionally considering it’s beauty. Brian got me to listen to bands and music that I probably wouldn’t have been listening to. We would listen to the same song and sing the lyrics together. I could understand the words but Brian, he could understand the meaning. My wife has taught me the same thing with art in general. She sees depth where I see only two dimensions. Both of them have taught me to not just hear the music or look at the painting but rather experience the music, experience the painting. There’s a difference and it’s not a nuanced difference. It reflects a thought structure that influences how you look at life. Unfortunately our society does a poor job of recognizing the power of balancing an analytic thought process with a artistic one. Our system forces an analytic outlook upon persons who see more than statistics in their everyday life. It’s damaging.
I so appreciate my wife and here perspectives. I appreciate how she has taught me wondrous things and that there is so much more to our experience than numbers and letters. Fortunately all our kids have inherited an understanding that art has value and can contribute to a greater life experience. Brian taught me that through music and I love him for that. Brian saw extreme beauty in a big beautiful blue sky but more impressively he saw meaning in that sky.
Beautiful Blue Sky 