Undergraduate /
"Hosanna" UVA supplement - What work of music surprised you? [3]
I feel like i'm missing the main point. The supplement deadline is tonight, so can someone please help me?
Prompt: What work of art, music, science, mathematics, or literature has surprised, unsettled, or challenged you, and in what way?
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I was at the church service when I checked my phone in response to the unwelcomed vibration-although I should've not-and the news about the death of my best friend was there. At first, I did not believe it; it must be a banter, but who would ever be joking about something as heavy and dark as a death? With the confusion all over my head, I quietly sat down and closed my eyes when everyone else was reading the scriptures out loud. God, it is not right to take life of someone who follows you the most. I logged on Facebook with slight hope of news being fabricated, and that little hope was crushed by 70 public R.I.P messages.
When the service was over, pastor turned on the song "Hosanna" as usual. I sat there in silence, numbed by the shock until the chorus sang this part: heal my heart and open up my eyes to the things unseen. My initial anger transformed to a mixed feeling of emptiness and a sense of filling up. It was the first time I cried over such trivial phrases. I still somewhat doubt the power of God since my friend's death, but I could feel that unseeable voice touched my bitter soul.
The song was so overused by my pastor that I had not had time to appreciate the lyrics, but it was the revelation to me that the song and lyric itself can do the healing effect, and it doubles when I can identify the link between them and my own experience. As Alfred W. Hunt said, "Music is the medicine of the broken heart."