Music, Sound, and the Energy in Your Home

Glen Hansard died this morning.

I found out and immediately put on one of his songs. Then another. And another. His voice has filled my home all day while I was cleaning, while I was working, while I was just sitting with the news of his absence.

His music is still here, even though he isn't.

That got me thinking about sound. About music. About the way a single voice can hold so much, and how it continues to hold us even after the person is gone.

Growing Up With Music

I didn't grow up in a home that was full of many good things. But the good things that existed, the memories I actually want to keep, almost all of them involve music.

My parents at the dining room table. A vinyl record spinning. My sister and I dancing in the family room. The two of us putting on little shows, singing into hairbrushes, completely alive in those moments.

For a long time, I didn't realize how much those moments shaped me. How they became the template for what I wanted my own home to feel like.

Music as the Language of Us

When I met my husband in college, our friendship was built on music. He expanded my world… Jay-Z, Nas, Bruce Springsteen. I brought Indigo Girls, Hole, Tori Amos. We were discovering each other through music at first, learning who the other person was by seeing what made them come alive.

The first time we ever did MDMA together, we locked ourselves in his apartment and listened to Smashing Pumpkins' "Disarm." It was one of those quintessential college moments where everything you thought you knew got blown up. Our hearts expanded. Our eyes opened. We walked away feeling like we'd discovered a hidden secret, that we're all connected.

Our first time at Bonnaroo, we stood in the middle of a music festival and dreamed up an entire new society. A way of living we were going to create when we got home. A place where music lived at the center of life. That dream shaped a lot of things that came after… the art projects we took on, the homes we built, the vision for how we wanted to actually live.

So when I got married, I wasn't marrying someone who also loved music. I was marrying the person who understood, without needing to say it, that a life worth living is one where music is at the center.

Music as a Main Character

In our home, music isn't background noise. It's a main character.

It's playing when I'm cleaning the kitchen, something about scrubbing and singing that just works. It's on when I'm painting a new canvas, when my husband is writing a poem or working on an art project, when we're cooking dinner together, when I'm falling asleep at night.

Our friends know this about us. They come over and we take turns playing songs we love, singing together, filling the house with our voices and theirs.

Then this morning came. Glen Hansard. His voice. And suddenly I understood even more why those moments matter.

Sound and Energy: A Feng Shui Perspective

From a feng shui standpoint, sound is energy. Music is vibration. When sound moves through your home, it's not just filling space, it's shifting what's already there.

There's a science behind this called cymatics. Sound waves physically alter matter. When a song plays, it literally reshapes the geometry of the air in your room. Sound waves manipulate water molecules and physical elements, changing their shape. In feng shui, we use that exact invisible geometry to break up stuck energy. The vibration becomes a tool.

Some sounds clear. A bell ringing. A chime. The vibration of a song you love, it can move stagnant energy, shake loose what's stuck. It can restore circulation to a space that's been holding its breath.

Other sounds amplify. When you play music that resonates with you, that makes you feel alive, you're not just hearing it. You're reinforcing the energy you want flowing through your home. You're saying: this is what we value here. This is what lives in this space.

A hummed melody. A song playing while you paint. Your friend's voice joining yours. These are adjustments. These are ways of telling your home what kind of energy belongs here.

What Glen's Voice Taught Me

I’ve spent today listening to Glen Hansard sing, and I realized something: his voice in my home is an adjustment.

Every time I play one of his songs, I'm inviting a specific kind of energy into my space. Longing. Rawness. Beauty. Heartbreak. Hope. The particular ache of recognizing yourself in someone else's pain and being grateful for it anyway.

That's what his music does. It enters a space and changes what's possible there.

And now that he's gone, his voice continues to do that work. It continues to fill homes. It continues to shift energy. It continues to remind us that sound is never just sound, it's a way of staying connected to something that matters.

The Songs We Choose

Your home's energy is shaped by a thousand small choices. Where you put things. What colors surround you. How you move through your space.

But one of the most powerful choices is what sound you allow into your home.

What music do you play? What songs make you feel alive? Whose voices do you want vibrating through your rooms while you live your life?

Do you have music playing while you work? While you fall asleep? Do your friends know you as someone who sings together, who fills the house with sound?

Or is your home mostly quiet?

Silence can be a beautiful yin sanctuary. A home can rest in quiet. But there's a massive difference between a home that is quiet because it is resting, and a home that is quiet because it is holding its breath. One is intentional. One is afraid.

There is intention in the sound. And there is intention in the silence.

There's no judgment either way. But there is a difference.

Because sound, whether it's a bell ringing, a chime moving in the wind, a hummed melody, or a song by someone whose voice touches your soul, sound is how you tell your home what energy belongs here.

Remembering Glen

Glen Hansard's voice was distinctive. Unmistakable. You heard it and you felt something shift inside you.

This morning, my husband texted me "Song of Good Hope." It's a song about reminding someone that it's going to be okay, even in times of doubt. Even when everything feels uncertain. The closing line is a wish: "May the song of good hope walk with you through everything."

I've been in a streak of doubt lately. And it's songs like this, Glen's voice, his words, his offering to us, that hold us while we sit in our home.

Today I'm grateful that voice still exists in the world, and very sad that he doesn’t. I am grateful that his songs continue to enter homes and change what's possible in those spaces. That somewhere right now, someone is playing his music and feeling less alone. That his voice is still doing the work of connecting us to something true.

I want that wish to be true for all of us: May the song of good hope walk with you through everything.

Music is one of the only ways we get to keep people we've lost.

So play the songs that matter to you. Fill your home with the voices that move you. Let sound shift and clear and amplify the energy of your space.

That's how you honor what matters.

That's how you keep the people who shaped you alive in your home.