There are no words, but you can still hear them.
It is so beautiful that it makes you feel more beautiful simply for having experienced it.
If angels played guitars instead of trumpets, this is what it would sound like.
This instrumental piece of pure musical craftmanship was written by Mark Knopfler for the score of the 1983 film Local Hero. And it is the most emotionally powerful thing I've heard since Bach belted the living crap out of his pipe organ. But don't infer that the Wild Theme has anything in common with the Tocatta and Fugue -- it doesn't. I was just giving you an idea of the intensity. While Bach's piece immediately confronts you with its scale and grandeur, Wild Theme, well ...
... it sneaks up on you.
The way a piece of music can sometimes touch you is deeply personal, and very nearly impossible to describe with words. I'm going to try anyway.
The opening bars softly infiltrate your senses, and then, so smoothly you weren't even aware of it happening, the song has you. It makes you feel warm and safe, and then it begins to whisper to you a story. At first, the story is a simple one, about serenity and peace. And then, something changes. With an elusive subtlety, the story becomes more complex, and more purposeful. It feels like hope.
Playing on your heartstrings just as surely and deftly as they evoke the chords from the guitar, Knopfler's hands weave a sense of gentle bliss into the tale, which becomes progressively more powerful, rising and unfolding into an overwhelming rapture. Just as the emotion becomes so potent that you think you are too small to contain it, the song vaults you into a single, perfect, echoing, aching chord that is so succint and poignant you almost can't bear to hear it fade away.
And with that, you are left to drift disbelievingly back down to your cold, dull reality on the soft and mellow closing bars.
The song exists in two forms (that I know of), the original piece on the Local Hero soundtrack, and the live version by Dire Straits on their "best of" album Sultans of Swing. Get comfortable, close your eyes, sit back and let the music take you. You won't regret it.