Music to my Ears

Our tan utilities were covered with a white film of salt from an accumulation of days worth of sweat and the bags under our eyes were of a dark purple as we rolled into the base in the desert moonlight. I could hear it in my head already, even before the sacred tunes were present. They were dancing around, lulling me into a hypnotic trance as I swiveled in my turret. After days of anxiety, stress, pressure, violence and fear, I longed for that drug. I longed for that intoxicating effect, the escape. I longed for music.
Ever since I was four years old, bopping around the house to my mom's eclectic collection of cassettes, I appreciated what music could do for a person's soul. I realized Christmas Eve just wasn't complete without Bing Crosby desperately trying to convince Doris Day to stay in "It's Cold Outside" and spring cleaning would not have been possible without the Beatles' melodious slaying of Rocky Raccoon. My love for music was being forged and, unbeknownst to me, ingrained in my mind as on of the most important ingredients in whom I would become in the future.
By the time I reached high school, my taste for music was changing almost as often as my shoe size. In a small midwestern town, at seventeen, it is socially intolerable to listen to anything other than country music, so I set out on a solo mission to find what music truly spoke to me. What I found was a colorful lesson in history, ethnicity, expressionism, creativity, and human nature. After years of listening to every type of music possible and absorbing as much information about that music as I could, I soon found that the challenge of finding what music I liked changed into finding a type of music I didn't like. Soon, I became infatuated. Every bad test grade was remedied by the rebellious harmony of Jimi Hendrix's screaming guitar. Every pain caused by the rejection of a girl was alleviated by the soothing whine of Neil Young. I spent many wild nights wailing in unison with Hank Williams III and just as many lonely nights with his grandfather. To me, music was as close a companion as one pubescent boy could get. It was a friend who understood exactly what I was going through, who organized my scattered feelings into something I could understand and allowed me to vent without saying a word. It was a voice that said exactly what I wanted to say, in a manner in which I only wished I could say it.
As hard as surviving high school was for me, I knew making it in the real world would prove even harder. While going through a fit of heavy metal and masculinity, I decided to temporarily delay this responsibility and join the Marine Corps. Within one year of enlisting I was walking off an airplane into the blazing summer heat of Iraq. I had left my family. I had left my friends. I had left my life. But I had brought my music, and other than my rifle, this was all I truly needed.
In a war where so many things were difficult to understand, music offered my fellow marines and me one thing that truly made sense. It offered a means of relaxation and escape from a highly stressful environment. On many occasions, speakers blasting an array of music from multiple tents masked the crackle of a distant firefight or outgoing artillery. Even choir-like outbreaks involving several marines were not uncommon when a radio was unavailable.
We were not alone in our passion for music as a distraction past time, it seemed. During a patrol in the small town of Mussayib, we stopped by the local police station to gather some intelligence on the local situation. There was a cluster of young police men in the lobby, gathered around a small black and white television watching a game of soccer. Cigarette smoke was thick and frying chickpeas sizzled over the sound of mild conversation. Suddenly, a young man entered the room with a stereo. With a push of a button the room rumbled with cheers and the previously docile men, who were once lounging and smoking were now writhing to the ouds, rebabs and cymbals of the Arabian song.
"No dance?" asked a young uniformed man, dancing with half a falafel in his mouth and a cigarette in his hand. It was then that I realized music speaks a universal language in which everyone is fluent. It crosses borders and cultural barriers, oceans and continents, and it compels bodies of all colors to dance and sing as one.
I left that police station with a smile on my face. Not only from the image of dancing falafel boy, but because I knew exactly how every person had felt the moment that music filled the room. For a brief moment, music had created a perfect utopia, where we all understood each other and religion and politics were unimportant.
We drove down the highway toward base as I swiveled in my turret and hummed under my breath. As the silver moon rose above the horizon, the music began to quietly play inside my head.