Music is so many things to me. A creative outlet. A place to experiment. A way for me to meet people I wouldn't normally meet. My personal therapy. A way to say things I wouldn't otherwise know how to say.

It's also about something a lot bigger and a lot cooler than that. It's about bringing people together to create something beautiful. 

In a world as tumultuous as this one is these days, a lot of people think it would be nice if we could all just get along. And I'm not denying that it would be. I would love to see the centuries-old conflict in the Middle East suddenly be resolved. I would love to live in a world where no one is treated unfairly because of the color of their skin or their gender or where they come from. I would love to live in a world where people everywhere can go about their business without fear of being attacked. 

However noble stopping all the fighting would be, though, there needs to be more to it than that. We need to work together to create something beautiful. That's what I want to do with music. I want to show people that even if people come from different cultures, even if they disagree on how the world and its people came into being, even if they have different ideas of how things should be done, we can put our differences aside to create something beautiful. I want to show people that we don't all have to agree or be the same, but we can still work together. Every time I record with someone, jam with someone, sing in a choir, I get to be part of that.

The person standing next to me might have ideas I disagree with. They might be completely baffled by some of my life choices, just as I might be baffled by theirs. Our personalities might clash. I might wish they weren't so damn practical and logical all the time, and they might wish I'd get my head out of the clouds, say something that concretely makes sense, figure out how to wear two socks that actually match, and finally sort out what left and right mean. We disagree on things, and sometimes vehemently. But when we're making music together, none of that matters. All that matters is the music. All that matters is creating something beautiful.

Unity doesn't mean we never disagree or that there's never any drama or hurt feelings or misunderstandings. Human relationships are messy, complicated happenings between messy, complicated people.

What it does mean is that those things don't stop us from coming together to make something beautiful. It doesn't stop us from appreciating the other people we're creating something beautiful with and what they have to contribute. 

I believe that every time people come together to create art of any kind, any time they come together for a humanitarian effort,or even when they just come together to be good friends, we're showing that there is still good in this world, that there is still something beautiful worth preserving.

We live in times when there are some who want nothing more than to destroy that beauty, destroy all that we love, divide us. When we come together to create, we show those around us that we will not be divided. We show them that even if it's just for a moment, we are allowing something beautiful to exist. We show them that love is not so easily destroyed.