The Vibration Within: An Invitation to Remember
“There’s a song for everything — or can be.”
When I was four years old, my grandmother placed her hands gently on my small chest and taught me something that would become the thread woven through every moment of my life:
The voice is a vehicle. Not just for sound, but for beauty. For responsibility. For joy. For the conveyance of messages that transcend words themselves.
I am a Dramatic Soprano who no longer sings. And yet, I sing every day.
Pause here. Listen. What is singing around you right now?
The Music That Never Stops
The Japanese scientist Masaru Emoto showed us something our hearts have always known: water — that substance which makes up most of our bodies, most of our earth — responds to vibration. Under his microscope, water exposed to Beethoven formed crystals of breathtaking symmetry. Water exposed to harsh words formed fractured, chaotic patterns.
The water remembered what it heard.
We are water. We are vibration. We are the instruments and the symphony both. This is not metaphor. This is physics. This is biology. This is the art and science of being alive.
Every blade of grass bending in the breeze is choreography. Every bird calling to its mate across the forest is an aria. Every wave greeting the shore is percussion — ancient, rhythmic, never the same twice and yet always familiar. The painter's brush carries poetry in every stroke. The sculptor's hands sing in stone.
As the young musician in August Rush knew: "The music is all around us, all you have to do is listen."
Pause here. What has your body remembered?
What vibration does it carry?
Pause here. What has your body remembered? What vibration does it carry?
The Impossibility of Hatred When Filled with Beauty
Here is what I know to be literally, physically, spiritually true:
It is impossible to have intercourse with art — with loving art, whether you find it conventionally beautiful or not — and simultaneously hold anger. You cannot be filled with and feeling beauty and think hurtful things about yourself or any other being.
Try it. I dare you.
Put on a piece of music that moves you. Stand before a painting that totally engages you. Read a poem that opens something inside you. Watch a dancer. Listen to a child's laughter. Observe the architecture of a spider's web.
Now try to hold onto your resentment. Your criticism. Your fear.
You can't.
Our hearts sing. Our spirits dance. Our being soars. The vibration of beauty outside us awakens, renews, and revitalizes the beauty that has always vibrated within us — sometimes still,sometimes forgotten, but never gone.
Pause here. Remember a moment when art lifted you. Where did you feel it in your body?
You Are the Artist You Seek
Perhaps you're reading this thinking, "But I'm not an artist. I don't paint. I don't sing. I can't..."
Stop.
You are an artist. You always have been.
You are an artist every time you arrange flowers in a vase, every time you choose words to comfort a friend, every time you notice the particular quality of afternoon light. You are an artist when you hum unconsciously, when you doodle in the margins, when you make a meal and present it with care, when you extend an open hand to another.
We are all artists because we are all expressions of the creative force that set the universe into motion. We are all instruments in the great orchestra. Some of us learned to read the sheet music.
Some of us play by ear. Some of us forgot we could play at all.
This is your invitation to remember.
Pause here. Breathe with this knowing. You are the artist you seek.
The Healing Is Already Here
The delicious truth — the what's-in-it-for-me-ness of all this, if you need practical reasons to engage with beauty — is this:
The healing power of art doesn't require money. It doesn't require a museum membership or a concert ticket, though those are wonderful. It doesn't depend on any particular technology. You
don't need the right equipment or the right training or the right anything.
Because art is omni-everything. Omnipresent. Omnipotent in its gentle way.
It is always available.
The vibration of beauty is in the rhythm of your breath. In the color of the sky right now. In the texture of the fabric against your skin. In the memory of your grandmother's hands. In the possibility of the next moment.
All things are energy. All vibrate at different frequencies. That is what life really is — a magnificent, complex, never-ending symphony of frequencies finding each other, harmonizing, creating something new.
You and I are "alive" differently, yes. But we are both alive in vibration. Both responding to beauty. Both capable of creating it, living it, being it.
Pause here. What form of art calls to you? What medium resonates with your particular vibration?
An Invitation, Not a Prescription
I am not here to tell you how to engage with art. I am not here to prescribe music over painting, dance over poetry, nature over human creation.
I am here simply to invite you.
To gently urge you.
To remind you with beauty that you have this gift available to you always — this gift of elevation, of dancing and soaring, of healing and renewal.
For me, music is the most powerful medicine. It has been since I was four years old, since conservatory, since the full vocal performance scholarship I was offered, since every performance and every silence that followed. Music is the thread through everything I am and everything I do.
But for you? Perhaps it is the garden. Perhaps it is words. Perhaps it is the way light moves across water, or the satisfaction of a perfectly executed recipe, or the wild abandon of dancing in your kitchen when no one is watching.
Whatever it is, it is waiting for you.
It has been waiting for you all along.
The Vibration Within
Here is my hope for you:
That you will stop, as you've stopped while reading this, and listen inward. That you will remember the vibration within you — the one that responded to your first lullaby, that thrilled at your first sunset, that knew without being taught that some things are sacred simply because they are beautiful.
That you will seek out the art forms that resonate with your soul, not because I or anyone else told you to, but because you remembered that you need them the way you need water and air and light — and that you will share them, for in sharing beauty, the vibration expands and multiplies exponentially.
That you will know yourself as an artist, even if you never create a painting or sing a note.
That you will let beauty in. That you will let it do its work of restoration, of renewal, of
reminding you who you really are beneath all the noise and busyness and hurt and forgetting.
That when life feels impossible, you will remember: there is a song for everything. Or can be.
A Final Pause
The breeze is singing right now, wherever you are. The earth is humming its ancient frequency beneath your feet. Your heart is drumming its steady rhythm.
You are surrounded by art. You are made of art. You are art.
All you have to do is listen.
All you have to do is remember.
All you have to do is give yourself permission to dance with the vibration that has been calling your name since before you were born.
Thank you, God, for this gift.
Thank you for the music all around us.
Thank you for the healing that is always, always available.
I invite you now to create your own manifesto. What does art mean to you? What has it healed in you? What vibration calls your name? Write it. Speak it. Sing it. Live it.
There's a song for everything — and you are part of the song.
About This Invitation
This essay was born from a lifetime of living with music — from a four-year-old's first lessons with her grandmother, through conservatories and scholarships and performances, to the deeper understanding that we are all instruments, all artists, all vibrating at frequencies that can heal or harm. It is offered as an invitation, a reminder, and a celebration of the healing power of art that surrounds us always. May it resonate with your own vibration, whatever form that takes.
