A musical mixologist is someone that blends samples of different music to create entirely new songs. Recently on NPR they featured a mixologist who traveled to various international cities and recorded hundreds of sound clips within those towns. He then mashed the sound bites to create a song of each city he visited. New York’s “song” sounded entirely different from L.A.’s “song”, which was an altogether different genre compared to the song of Paris. New York’s song included sound bites of jammed traffic, the clip of a woman’s high heels, a dog barking, the street calls of market vendors, and the bustle of everday comotion on the sidewalks. Compiled together, the sound clips captured the essence of New York City within a musical piece that was actually quite catchy. Each city’s song encapsulated the lifestyle of the people who live within that city, or perhaps the “personality” of the city itself.
This made me wonder what my song would sound like? The actions I take on a consistent basis, or my habits, become a place or a comfort zone that I inhabit daily. To inhabit a place means that I dwell there, my habitat. My habitat is my own little “city” that someone could create a song from. But what kind of song would it be? If someone were to follow my life over the course of several months, taking sound bites of the ins-and-outs of my everyday life and compile them into my song, then what kind of song would come out of it? And how would each person’s song differ from another? Would someone that’s more laid-back and complacent produce a song that emits the same style?
Perhaps even more interesting would be if the same technique could be applied outside of music, and a visual representation of my life was created in one art piece. Would it reflect any of the things I say that I believe? Or would it reveal something quite different? It could be similiar to The Picture of Dorian Gray, where the artwork displays my true form, something quite scary.
Perhaps the song or artwork of my little city, the place I dwell, would be much better off if someone else dwelled in it besides myself. It would have to be somebody pretty cool so that my life’s song didn’t sound like something from ABBA or Michael W. Smith. What if I chose God? If He was the one living in my “city”, then His life’s song would probably create a masterpiece. I try to choose Him every day as the person who inhabits my city, so that perhaps my daily actions, words, and habits create sound bites and images that are much more beautiful than what I produce on my own. Through Christ I’m being built together to ” become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit” (Ephesians 2:22). Awesome, so maybe my song could be a little less disco and a little more rock n’ roll.
