For the moments when I can’t read, I write. For the moments when I can’t write, I read. This is a recent development. One I’m more than happy to report.
For the longest time, reading wasn’t part of the equation. Not that it was non-existent, it was there – Harry Potter plays a major role in my life and has played that major role since I first saw the first movie when I was 11-years-old – but reading books, in general, was something I couldn’t fully invest myself in. Not until I stopped writing.
See, writing was always something I could turn to. Writing is something that runs in the blood and that thought was something I took to heart. I wrote my first ever poem when I was six or seven and it got published in one of our national newspapers (back when printed newspapers, and well, newspapers, were a thing). One of my favorite things to do when bored in class, particularly in high school, was folding up one of my intermediate papers, and write and not stop writing as my teacher would drone on and one about whatever it was they were meant to instill in my head. I’m incredibly method about it. I’d clear out my desk, take out the pad, rip one out and fold it – I have a very specific way of folding it – and start writing. This is a practice I still do to this very day.
(I’d like to take this moment to apologize to my teachers from grade school all the way to college who thought I was heavily invested in taking notes and capturing everything they were saying verbatim, because I wasn’t, I was trying to save myself from dozing off as well as being remarkably witty and creative in my writing.)
However, there’s something that happens when you lose a loved one. You lose a part of you. And somehow, when I lost my father, the writing part of me went with him. More specifically, the musical part. I couldn’t write. The one thing I’d always known I could do, I couldn’t do. Picking up the guitar he got me for my 15th birthday felt completely foreign to me. Playing songs, songs I’d written, felt unreal, uncomfortable. This went on for years.
When the writing stopped, I thought it was just taking a vacation and I held out hope that it would somehow come back. So I waited and waited. And waited and waited. I waited until writing didn’t make any sense. Until putting words together on paper didn’t make sense. Until coming up with melodies felt trivial and creating something completely my own felt insignificant.
A few people in my life later told me to start reading. I also figured, if I can’t write, might as well read. So, sometime towards the end of 2016, I started to pick up books again. One book after another. After another. After another. It hasn’t stopped. In the year of 2017, I may have read more books in those 52 weeks than I ever have in my entire life. Just don’t ask me how many was read because the whole thing was so new to me and I was simply taking it book by book that the thought of jotting down the books I’ve read didn’t cross my mind until the end of 2017 when I was reminiscing the year that was (as one tends to do at the end of the year) and realized I’ve just read and read and read and read. I can try to remember the books but one thing about me is that my memory is faulty. Half the time, I don’t remember things that happened just 24hours prior, so I can try but I will fail miserably at trying to remember the books I’d ‘experienced’ in 52 weeks. I say ‘experience’ books because I consume literature in physical books, eBooks and audiobooks.
In all of these moments, music is constant. It may not be my music, but it was music that I identified with, that spoke to me. Music is always playing, it never stops. The only time music stop is when my mind is too noisy and the can’t find the music amidst all the noise. These nonmusical moments very rarely happen.
All my life, I thought I was just a weird kid who grew up watching too much MTV (back when MTV was MTV) so while kids my age were talking about the latest cartoon shows and games, I was in my own head trying to imagine what the music video would be like for my favorite songs off of the latest cassette tape I’d just gotten, or try to come up with choreography for one of the upbeat tracks so I can have something to teach and present for our monthly culminating activity in school along with my classmates and schoolmates who had no choice in the matter coz I had something they could also contribute to for the activity.
Dance, before anything else, was my first love. It seems strange, I know, I’ve only just brought it up. Dance was my creative outlet very early on. I was always that kid that was asked to dance during family gatherings, and I, the introvert showoff in my childish confidence, would just step right up and dance to whatever they played.
One of my more memorable dance moments had to be when I was around six or seven (MTV era) at my father’s company Christmas party. I danced to the Backstreet Boys’ ‘Get Down (You’re The One For Me)’ (Backstreet Boys played, plays, a huge role in my life but that’s a whole other thing that’ll require its own post, so – later). I freestyled the whole thing, something I often did when I didn’t have to coordinate with anyone else, again, in my childish relentless confidence. I don’t remember much of what I did, I just moved to the music. I remember the applause that came afterwards. I remember the sheer awe in my parents’ faces – this may have been the moment when they realized the extent of their youngest child’s natural and awesome weirdness (I can say that coz they love me). I remember my parents enjoying the performance so much that they didn’t get to take any photos.
I danced all throughout my pre-teen years until puberty hit. Dance was always something I could go back to every few years. Something that revives a part of me that can only be accessed by movement. When the dancing started to not be the focus, songwriting slowly started to come into view. At the heart of it all is music.
Music, from the very beginning, has been the thing that allowed me to create something entirely my own. Music taught me to dance and when the dancing stopped, it gave me songs to write. My relationship with music is ever evolving and so is the opportunity to create something through music in whatever shape it may take.
Music has saved me more times than I can count. It has allowed me to find myself, find my own place, as a young kid who was accepted at home and in school but was also acceptably weird. It was my safe place during the angst-ridden teenage years. It is where I find moments of peace in adult life in the moments when the world gets a little too mad. It’s what calms me down whenever I have my anxiety and panic attacks. It’s what helps me deal with my own demons.