Making our Own Music:

In an interview with William Parry, a pianist and composer who got his start in accompanying silent films, the interviewer commented, “That (being a silent film accompanist) must have required great attention. You must have followed the action frame by frame to reflect in the music what the audience was seeing on the screen.”

“Yes,” Parry agreed, “but it also worked the other way. The music I played affected what moviegoers saw.”

He remembered one Charlie Chaplin film, with its trademark blend of humor and pathos, where he could underscore a scene either way. “If I played bright, bouncy tunes, the audience would roar with laughter. But if I accompanied the very same scene with mournful music, handkerchiefs would come out all over the theater.”

I think it is that we go through life, each hearing our own background music. For some it is brisk and stirring, for others it is in a minor key. For some it is full of dissonance, for another melodic and harmonious. The same set of circumstances in two different lives can be handled in different ways – depending on the background music with which one accompanies life.

I know for myself, about a year ago I changed the background music on my radios. With the change to more positive music, I found myself seeing events and circumstances differently. The same can be true of the background “music” of the books we read and the movies we watch and the TV programs that are selected.

In the end, you see, we may not be able to change the circumstances or events of life, but we can change the music to which they are set.