Sometimes all you can hear is music. Now I'm not saying that's a bad thing (the opposite in fact) but can you name one thing or event that isn't improved by music? Think about it. Parties, weddings, funerals, housework, road trips, even staring aimlessly into the distance. All improved by music. Some of them even impossible to imagine without music.
And this isn't even particular to us in the here and now. Sure, we may be more assaulted by people's choice of music than ever before through phones and portable speakers (you know you're living in the here and now that even when you're in the middle of a body of water, kayaking, your boat mate is still able to blast out Just Around the River Bend from the Disney movie Pocahontas, in order to live out a childhood dream. Yes, people did look. And yes, it was kind of awesome. And yes, there were even dolphins. And no, I'm not even making this up).
Look at cultures separated from us through time and geography. They all have their own music traditions, their own particular sound. It's kind of uncanny, this human need to make music (and I say human because I've never heard of any other species sitting down, cobbling together some kind of pan flute and getting the band back together). The oldest known instrument is dated to around 40 000 years ago and is a flute made of bird bones (pretty cool but I think I'll stick to my silver one). So it's not a new thing, this marking of time with music.
I think it's more than kind of awesome that this tradition of music carries on. Sound and style might shift and change but at its core it stays the same. Yet sometimes you will find yourself somewhere where there is no music playing (this can be surprisingly difficult to do, so congratulations!). At this point, this is where the music usually gets turned up in my head. Not on purpose, it's just like something needs to be playing in the background. This is why at band the last piece we play for the evening is very important. Because odds are this is the tune you're going to have stuck in your head for the next twenty four hours. So if you don't already like it, you are going to learn to love it (mind you, when you get caught out humming, whatever band piece it is, is generally far more impressive than having to say Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen. And I blame commercial radio for that).
Music is everywhere. Sometimes it's obvious, at a concert, on the radio, the guy on the bus, sound spilling out from his ear buds. Sometimes it's less so, drifting on the breeze. Sometimes it is the breeze, the call of birdsong, the click of cicadas marking the temperature. Sometimes it's simply in your head.
Sometimes it is all you can hear.