A Flash Mob Kind of Life

This post is sort of inspired by the new Brandon Sanderson book, but not entirely.  I've had this idea for a while but the timing of the post is partly due to the book (which is really good).

I sing to myself a fair amount.  I used to belt it out when I worked graveyard shift and it was just me (and Rob, and Marifi) in the lab (they didn't care).  I thought it might die away when I worked day shift with more people around but...  nope.  I still catch myself singing at my current job although I keep the volume anywhere from a mp to a pp (or maybe a mf if its the weekend and no one else is standing in my department).  I sing in the parking lot, in the car, cleaning my house.  Singing to myself is a BIG habit of mine that I don't know if I could ever really break.  Creating music helps me express myself and does good things for the soul.

It makes me feel so good that I wish that people would sing along with me.  It would be fun to sing with other people on a regular basis and I sometimes wish group singing was still a common thing in society.  There isn't a question about WHY it isn't as common anymore; with the radio and MP3s, no one need rely on their own voices for entertainment.  I'm not complaining that we have such easy access to high quality of music either, but I also feel a sense of loss that the majority of society has lost the motivation to fill the silence with their own voices.  

People still write music, but not as much as they used to and not for so wide a variety of situations.  They used to sing work songs, cleaning songs, hunting songs, factory songs, sailing songs, cowboy songs, lumber jack songs, mining songs.  People would just make up songs for whatever the task, mood, or situation.  Can you imagine the surgeon's song, the computer programmer's medley, the lab tech ballad?  The whole idea seems a little Buddy the Elf-ish but it would be less socially awkward because no one would be singing alone.

But if you really think about it; its something deep within us, something natural.  We all have some sort of universal connection to music, even at a young age.  Babies will bounce to the beat.  When toddlers are exposed to music, they right away start making up songs.  Granted, they aren't musical masterpieces;  they're singing about how their going upstairs and into their room and how their going to play with Mike the bear because he's his favorite but not dog even though he still thinks he's pretty cool and now its time for goldfish crackers which are good.

I feel like Moster's Inc captures this toddler tendency well

In some way, we all feel connected to music and we all create a unique connection with each other as we share music.  When we listen to a song on the radio together, it connects us.  However, when you are singing a song with the people close to you, possibly a song that you wrote together, or a song that is more specific to what you are really doing or feeling, it connects you in a deeper, more substantial way.  In a world growing ever and ever more superficially connected through digital connections and less and less connected to the people living and breathing around them, no wonder people so often feel isolated, lonely, and disconnected.

Maybe someday I'll be able to discover a niche in that sort of world.  A world that feels like a musical or a Disney movie or a flash mob.  I want to live in a world full of music and dancing and human connections.  I guess I'll have to keep jamming to the beat of my own heart until I find it.