I cannot play an instrument. Oh, I picked up a guitar when I was younger, and plucked out "Edelweiss" and Bette Midler's "The Rose" by ear, but I never really learned to play. My grandmother tried to get me piano lessons, to keep me occupied on my grandma visits, and I learned how to play "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and "Jingle Bells" with the chords and everything, but that was all I ever did. I got a harp, and learned how to tune it from my dusty Yamaha keyboard and plucked out "Ode to Joy" and, again, "Edelweiss." And that was the end of that.

And I can't sing, at least not really. If there's a tune with just the right notes in it for my alto range I do okay, but I can't *really* sing.

The gift I have is all the incredible musicians I have around me. And it's not that I've never considered this before, but it's been striking me more and more recently what talented people I know, and how much music in general means to me.

Jake can't play piano anymore, lack of practice and basically arthritis, I think, but I remember sitting with my back against the piano, feeling the music vibrate in my chest as he played.

I remember watching Sean and Kiernan with their guitars, sitting by a fire, playing and singing together, beautifully blending the music basically for the hell of it. Or the joy of it.

I watched Brian Porterfield, in his cups, remember a song he'd forgotten how to play years ago and play and sing it perfectly, only to have forgotten it again by the next night. It was a song he'd written something like ten years ago, insightful and witty, not that that's surprising from him. I need to get him drunk enough to remember it again.

I've listened to Malissa sing an a cappella song with a voice so pure and clear and *loud* that at an open mic night of primarily bad cover songs the crowd went silent not only during but for several moments after she stopped singing, before they applauded.

I've seen the Weedhawks get an entire party of people from ages 7 to 70 bobbing their heads and laughing to a song titled something like "Poor Dead Raver Girl." Candy bracelets, line her casket...

And I don't think there's anything more fun than watching a band, in this case Hogblast but I've also seen it with the V-Necks and the Weedhawks, just start playing around with pieces of songs, taking the kind of cues from each other that can only come from having played together for so long, and then jumping seamlessly together into some other song entirely...

And none of that even captures the essence of what I'm trying to say. Music is just this amazing magic. It strikes somewhere so vital, whether it's listening to the Dropkick Murphy's after a long day at work, or listening to Sarah McLaughlin after a break-up, that it defies our clumsy attempts at categorization.. Sure, on some level it *is* the most widespread form of poetry we appreciate today, but it's more than that. Part of it is that music is engaging on so many separate mental and physical levels. I could feel the piano vibrate through me when Jake was playing it. I can feel the drumbeat in my tummy when Sean plays. I feel the urge to dance or laugh or hold my breath. I can feel the music soothe me, or energize me, or express something for me that I can't articulate with mere words, but that comes through so clearly with the snarl of an electric guitar and smash of the cymbal.

I'm fortunate to have these people around me. I'm fortunate that I frequent a bar which prides itself on live music, to live in a town which prides itself on local music.

And I guess I just wanted to share that.