Prompt: In 300-500 words, write creatively about a person, place or thing you could not live without and explain why.

Music is the embodiment of emotion. Every time I’ve been asked to put a feeling into words it never sounds as great at the feeling felt. Trying to recreate how a certain song makes you feel in a certain moment, or how it evokes a memory will forever be a challenge because I really wish you could feel it too. Listening to a song that scratches your brain just right feels like when you drink ice cold water on an empty stomach. All of this feeling or emotion is confined to one area in your body. There’s no greater euphoria than hearing a song that makes you experience that feeling of pure elation forming in your chest . It seems like the song is so brilliant, that the elation could grow so big it could rise up out of your chest and make you cry out with exultation. I could not live without that feeling. Sometimes you can’t always grasp that feeling because songs that force you to cry out aren’t super common. Even a song you’ve heard a million times playing in the background makes your day much easier to get through. Music reveals the feelings that we can’t always put into words because it is a universal language. Through the beauty of music, you can tell someone how much you love and appreciate them by saying these simply beautiful phrases “this song reminded me of you” or “I downloaded that song you showed me today”. Songs are like time capsules because everytime you listen to them, they transport you back to the moment you first heard it or a moment that tattooed your brain. No matter how old you are or what stage of life you reside in, when you listen to that particular song, you are just as old and just as carefree or troubled as you were when you first became attached to that song. When I hear the song Just like Heaven by The Cure, I time travel back to the backseat of my fathers car as a small child, with the windows open and the smell of fresh cut grass, and him telling me “This is a love song. This is really what love feels like”. Now if someone or something feels like “Just Like Heaven”, I know it’s something worth cherishing. After all, music is just a form of self expression. There’s music for when you’re angry, hopeless, numb, manic, in love, unworried, reckless, and ecstatic. And sometimes there’s music that makes you feel those feelings all at once. Music weaves its way through moments and people in your life and connects them so effortlessly and graciously. With music, we aren’t really stuck in our present timeline, we are forever traveling back and living our experiences over and over again. If I didn’t have music, I wouldn’t be able to see the world as clearly, I wouldn’t be able to appreciate those unspoken moments, I wouldn’t be able to drown out the mind-splitting silence, and I wouldn’t be living, I would be merely existing.

–Emily Unks