by Karen Telleen-Lawton, Noozhawk Columnist (Read original in Noozhawk)
August 11, 2025 | 3:00 pm
Remember the love languages? Author Gary Chapman described them more than 30 years ago, identifying five ways of expressing and receiving love: words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, physical touch, and acts of service.
A Native American flute rests at the center of a labyrinth at the Sunburst Sanctuary. (Courtesy photo)
While these methods are all meaningful, I perceive music as the outstanding language of love — a natural love language that transcends cultures and even species.
My growing-up family couldn’t claim musical talent, but we were enthusiastic. On long car trips around the southwest, before iPhones or CDs, we learned songs from our parents’ childhoods and wrote silly lyrics baiting each other’s idiosyncrasies.
If that’s not love, what is?
Ten years of piano lessons convinced me I wasn’t cut out to be a concert musician, but it didn’t dampen my love for music. I played Christmas carols in season, plus occasional duets with friends.
Eventually, we shipped our piano to our daughter, replacing their kids’ tinny keyboard — another act of musical love.
I stumbled into alto saxophone through a love of jazz. My senior brain was tediously slow to learn the fingering, but eventually I found my way to the Prime Time Band.
Entranced by the surround-sound during Tuesday practices, I occasionally forgot to play. Sitting in the middle of the band, immersed in sound, was like being surrounded by love.
At home, I practiced in the living room where a large bougainvillea vine overhung the open window. House finches and hummingbirds gathered outside occasionally, perching on the vine or pausing in the air. They seemed momentarily mesmerized by the music — my first hint that music truly is a cross-species language.
Hard work and inspiration from band members fostered seven years of magical music.
Eye surgeries derailed my saxophone career, but I am never far from the sound of music. When my husband and I travel, we always seek out local music venues. The lyrics may be foreign, but the tunes — joyful, soulful, or playful — speak to each culture’s love for their history and their land.
In Scotland I rediscovered my desire to make music again. The Celtic wood flute‘s pleasing clear resonance caught my ear; making it sing caught my attention. It seemed to require less breath than the saxophone, and fewer tone holes made it easier for my arthritic fingers to manage.
On the web I found Erik the Flutemaker, who creates Native American flutes while supporting subsistence farming villages in Nicaragua with proceeds.
I chose the courting flute, with its romantic story of a brave playing outside a girl’s parents’ teepee. If she came out and acknowledged him, he’d put a blanket over her shoulders, and they were betrothed.
I love playing my Native American flute outdoors. I sit under an oak at the top of my yard and play.
Following a flute workshop by Al King at the Sunburst Sanctuary in Lompoc, my practice is literally play. I experiment with sounds, tones, and ornaments like slurs, trills, and turn-arounds.
After creating music for a while, I like to listen, trying to imitate the sounds in my yard. A large bumblebee’s buzz is easy to recreate, as is the bouncing-ball call of the wrentit.
The mournful songs of lesser goldfinches and mourning doves aren’t difficult, though I doubt I’ve fooled them. I don’t think I stand a chance at imitating the complex, flute-like melody of the house finch.
King’s workshop reinforced music as a universal love language. He emphasized the Native American flute’s role in spiritual practice.
“When playing the flute we can use our breath as a prayer offering,” said King. “The music that comes through is our offering to spirit using our life force to create a musical prayer. Each of us has a song within us.”
Perhaps that’s the essence of music as love language. It gives voice that words cannot express, creating connection. It reminds us that love, like music, lives not just in the notes we play, but in the spaces between them.
Silly car songs with family, the embrace of a jazz ensemble, the prayer of a wooden flute under an oak tree: music remains our most universal way of saying, “I love you” to the world.
Karen Telleen-Lawton, Noozhawk Columnist
Karen Telleen-Lawton is an eco-writer, sharing information and insights about economics and ecology, finances and the environment. Having recently retired from financial planning and advising, she spends more time exploring the outdoors — and reading and writing about it. The opinions expressed are her own.