24 March

I can’t say that it has dawned on me just now because it is something that I think about almost everyday. And it was by chance or coincidence, which ever you subscribe to, that brought me to the whirlwind of thought that my head sits in right now. I suppose the first question that I have to ask myself is when I stopped playing music. And then, the following question would be why. Neither of which I can answer truthfully off the top of my head but they are two questions I’ve answered repeatedly over the years. I suppose I was in high school when I gave up playing music but it was a year or two before when I quit playing seriously. Why? I don’t know. I can guess that it had something to do with becoming a teenager. The fight within one’s self to do what you love or do what you think you’re supposed to be doing which for me was to look as if I were a normal kid with friends and not some loner who sat inside all day playing with wood and string. I suppose it was having two parents who represented both options for me. My mother, the one who wanted to have everything, to be liked and appreciated and popular. My father however was the one who seemed to be content keeping to himself, lost in books and music. The outgoing personality belonged to my mother who seemed to demean my father for his solitude and withdrawn nature. So I suppose I saw my two paths laid out before me my entire childhood. Strive to be something or be made to feel bad for doing nothing. Now, this is not to say that my father did nothing or that my mother was something but in matters of perception my mother was trying to be something and she was always on my dad’s case about nothing. Did I want to that? So instead of choosing one or the other I fought with both and eventually…well nothing is eventual. I suppose I could say, eventually I gave up music but I haven’t...not yet. I hear it everyday. Tones, pitches, harmonies, rhythms and melodies are in everything that surrounds me. Music, and visual art I would argue, are the closest things we have to expressing emotion. Words aren't enough. Words do no justice for expressing the way we actually feel. Music, music, music...it can fill you up. A string of notes has the ability to make you cry or smile or do both simultaneously. I want to be a part of that again.