A Couple Sunday Tunes

       My name is Roozden, and I am addicted to music.  I'm a beat-aholic, a tune junkie, a note hound, an album aficionado, a song sucker, a ditty disciple, a band buff, an ensemble enthusiast, a minstrel maniac.  I'm a fiend for fugues, and I'm coo-coo for choruses, I'm a crack head.  Wait, not I'm not.  Disregard that last one.  Anyway, I like music a lot and much of my free time is spent digging for a new sound the way Indiana Jones looks for artifacts.  As a result, I listen to a wide and eclectic range of musical genres, including such unlikely bedfellows as Folk Metal, Pirate Hip-Hop, Gregorian Chant, Sacred Harp, and Chiptunes, which sounds   like a Nintendo being thrown down a stairwell (thank goodness there's no accounting for taste).

       Leo Tolstoy said
that music is the shorthand of emotion, and I love the thought of music as another language which taps directly into emotion.  It's a higher, exalted language.  It's the language we use when we're run out of words.  It expresses the things that are impossible to say but must be given expression.  It bypasses conscious thought and speaks directly to the soul.  It can only be understood by the soul, although the soul can never translate it.

      It's also the only language that's completely universal.  I have all my own particular loves, sorrows, joys, and aspirations, and you have yours.  These things belong to everyone, and music is the only mean by which we can truly feel their universality.  It's humanity's binding thread and, like another thing that binds all of human life together, it is no respecter of persons.

      I'd love to keep talking about music, but I'm starting to wax poetic now and my original intent was just to share a couple songs here, since one of my life's supreme delights is sharing music I care about with other people.  Especially when they end up liking it.  Honestly, few things in life make me as happy as when someone tells me the song or and I recommended is as good as I told them it was.

      So it's Sunday, and one of my favorite Sunday activities is listening to meaningful music either by itself or while reading the scriptures.  While I enjoy all my music, the music I listen to on Sunday has by far the most powerful effect on me.  Below are two such songs to make your Sunday special.

My Kindness Shall Not Depart From Thee

I first heard this song during a sacrament meeting in Manhattan, NYC on my mission.  I loved it and asked my family if they could find a copy of the song for me.  They looked but couldn't find the song I was looking for.  It stayed in my mind throughout my mission and when I came home it was one of the first things I looked up.  The lyrics are verbatim from D&C 121, which is one of my very favorite sections, and has seen me through some hard times in my life.

He Sent His Son

On the day that my sister was sealed in the Bountiful Temple, I had an incredible spiritual experience that I"ll never forget while sitting in a waiting room while the bride and groom got ready, triggered by the sound of this song being played on an organ somewhere.  Ever since, this song has been special to me.