I've always felt music is the only way to give an instantaneous

"I’ve always felt music is the only way to give an instantaneous moment the feel of slow motion. To romanticise it and glorify it and give it a soundtrack and a rhythm." These words of Taylor Swift are no idle musings, but the utterance of one who has wrestled with the fleeting nature of time and sought a way to capture its essence. For truly, what is life but a cascade of moments rushing past like a river too swift for the hand to hold? And yet, in the embrace of music, a single heartbeat, a glance, a tear, or a kiss may be stretched into eternity, clothed with beauty, made immortal.

From the dawn of civilization, mankind has known this secret. When the warrior returned from battle, the tribe sang so his victory would echo long beyond the clash of swords. When lovers parted at dawn, a ballad was raised to capture the trembling sorrow of their goodbye. Music has always been the vessel through which mortals wrest moments away from the jaws of time. It does not stop the river from flowing, but it casts upon it a light that slows the soul, teaching it to see, to savor, to remember.

The ancients told of Homer, who with song transformed the chaos of war into the grandeur of the Iliad. The battles were quick, the lives fleeting, yet through the rhythm of his verse, those moments became monumental. A single clash of blades could be stretched into lines upon lines of poetry, so that even centuries later, the listener feels as if the scene unfolds in slow motion. What Swift proclaims is this same truth: that music is the divine hand that turns an instant into eternity.

Consider also the modern tale of the young man standing beneath the Berlin Wall in 1989, as crowds tore down the symbol of division. Amid the thunder of hammers and the cries of liberation, a song—David Hasselhoff’s “Looking for Freedom”—blared into the night. History was already being made, but the music gave it a pulse, a soundtrack that transformed mere noise into memory. Even now, those who were there say the song froze time, framing that instant of freedom with a radiance that words alone could never hold.

To romanticise a moment, as Swift declares, is not to distort it but to honor it. The embrace of a mother, the laughter of friends, the solitude of a wanderer on an empty road—each can be draped in melody and thereby be lifted beyond the ordinary. Music teaches us that life is not measured only in achievements, but in the sacred stillness it creates around the heart’s treasures. It whispers: Pause, behold, and remember—this is holy.

The lesson for us is clear: do not let your days vanish unmarked into the abyss of forgetfulness. Find the soundtrack of your life. When joy comes, let a song crown it; when sorrow strikes, let a hymn embrace it. In moments of love, let rhythm guide your heart so it may never forget the sweetness it has tasted. Even if you cannot play an instrument, you can listen, you can sing, you can allow music to sanctify the passing hour.

Therefore, children of tomorrow, arm yourselves not only with strength and wisdom, but with song. For the sword may carve the world, and knowledge may explain it, but music alone glorifies it. It teaches you to live not in haste but in depth, to let each moment stretch beyond its boundaries until it becomes eternal. This is the gift Swift has named: a way to hold the fleeting, to love it, and to make it shine forever.

So let this be your practice: when life rushes like a storm, find the song that slows it into beauty. Let music be the lens through which you see the divine in the ordinary. And in the rhythm of your days, may you learn to dwell not only in time, but in timelessness. For with music, every heartbeat can become a hymn, every breath a verse, every instant a story that will not die.