I have this feeling that life would be so much better with music. No, I’m not talking about Rolling Stones or ZZ Top; I mean film music. What if there was a silent score that accompanied you throughout the day? Like you were walking in a living movie, moment for moment; a soft, melodic film score moving with you throughout your day, following your every mood and accentuating each moment?

I do that from time to time. I put on my mp3 player and headphones, and go about doing ordinary stuff. I brush my teeth and get ready for bed accompanied by Mark Isham’s wonderful score to October Sky, which makes me feel like that ordinary activity is suddenly a moment in life captured for historians to come; as though movie-goers watch over my shoulder to immerse in this important part of my life. I walk to work accompanied my military marches, pretending I’m out marching with my unit (and I pray no one notices that I’m actually marching), and I roll into the parking lot while the music from National Treasure builds and builds, and erupt in spontaneous fanfares and pomp and circumstance as I gently roll to a stop in my own parking space.

Music like that can fundamentally change the way you think about ordinary activities. Just like people use fast, upbeat music to put them into mood for business or work or success, so an infinite amount of emotional music can accentuate your day and alter the mood of any situation.

For instance…

• The Pink Panther theme can be wonderful for sneaking into the laundromat and doing the washes, secretly, as if on a covert operation…
• Schindler’s List can be used successfully on the bus, making you imagine that all the passengers are just random people pushed together, without future, without hope, heading for the concentration camps (cubicles); the strains of their fading humanity echoing throughout history like the moving tune of a lone violin…
• Opera can be used with great effect at any time throughout the day, like all your coworkers bursting out in spontaneous song as they float the mighty boats down the river Volga.

In fact, the stranger the music, the more humorous it becomes. “O Sole Mio” can provide interesting effects while attacking enemy strongholds; “Top Gun” works miracles while fixing bugs in computer programs.

Oh, that my life was like a movie. :)