stories without words

I've been noticing how much of our days are filled with trading stories back and forth and beginning to think there was a little too much content in my life. There's so much information coming in all the time between CNN in the morning and the newspapers and blogs I read and people talking to me, and the conversations I can't help but over hear and the New Yorker and the Christian Century and television and billboards and ads, that I worry I'm squeezing out space in my life to put together my own stories.

So I made one change in my routine. Instead of listening to the news on the radio when I'm in my car I decided to listen to the classical music station instead.

I soon realized what a small improvement that was. Music, even classical music with no words, is still a kind of story, not much different from what I was listening to before. Music is the product of a mind, carefully chosen sounds, instead of words, arranged to form an abstract message, rather than a narrative. My mind engages with it exactly the same way I engage with a news item. And the communication is still one way, into my brain and stirring my thoughts.