My friend, Jen, recently wrote about how books and music and can bring people together or drive them apart. I couldn’t agree more.
My husband and I both love to read and have multiple bookcases stuffed with books. One of my favorite things to do over a lazy weekend is to just sit side by side reading. Later, we’ll discuss. We both like to go to bookstores and look forward to our annual library’s book sale. One of us will read something (a book, a short story, a newspaper article, etc…) and then suggest the other person read it. We often give each other books on gift giving occasions. For our one year wedding anniversary, the paper anniversary, it was my idea to give each other bookmarks.
Back when I was a freshman in college, I dated a musician. The relationship was a bit doomed from the start due to our age difference. I was a bright-eyed naive 18 year old freshman, he a man of 26 years of age. As we get older, I don’t think age gaps are that big of a deal, but 18 vs. 26 is a big deal. He had already moved out of his parents house, been on his own, supported himself, had real jobs, been on tour, lived, loved, lost, and got over it and kept on living. I had just begun. ANYWAY, music was in his soul. Music was a huge part of his life. He tried to teach me to play guitar but I was too tone deaf to tune my own guitar! I could learn the chords but had difficulty playing them fast enough so I could make music rather than chord, pause, chord, pause, strum, pause. I was always amazed that when I passed my guitar to someone else they could make genuine music come out of it. The relationship ended for many reasons, one of which being that we couldn’t share something that was so important to him: music. I could appreciate music but I could create any of my own to share.
