Musing on the Sounds

It’s no secret that I reignited my love for music approximately twenty-two months ago when I unearthed my guitar from the depths of my storage space. Since then, I have been quite diligent and vigilant in maintaining my practice schedule, and I can say with a good deal of confidence that I am finally at a place where I can simply pick up the instrument and “play.” However, this newfound skill came with a price; in retrospect, it’s laughable, but at the moment of inception, it was quite frightening indeed. So, rather than hem and haw, I’ll cut right to the chase.

Last week, I went to visit my primary physician with the complaint of “hearing voices.” This is, without a doubt, an extremely serious matter as one can attest to, and it had me quite worried. I couldn’t hear what these voices were saying, and I wasn’t entirely convinced they were even voices in the first place (although it was most certainly a pitched sound, and it had the timbre of what I thought was a human voice). After describing in detail what I was experiencing, my physician did due diligence and asked about my life and if there were any changes from the norm since I had last seen him. The only thing I could think of was my voracious appetite for music, and at this, he began to chuckle. An innocent question, dripping with such sarcasm that I at once felt naive and ignorant, he asked “have you ever tried to play what these voices are trying to say?” I suddenly realized what he was implying, and that is, I am hearing musical phrases unique to my own experience.

I now find myself charting a new musical course as I begin to stitch these melodies together and create original compositions. It begins one way, and then mutates into something a bit more concrete – now, it’s at the point where I can sing things without having to force myself to remember them, as they make “sense.” And it’s precisely at this point where I now feel I possess a skill. What keeps me honest is not being in a rush, not being in a race, and not being concerned with anything other than its existence. And whether this means sharing it with others, or creating strictly for an audience of one, the fact that these melodies appear out of the ether is thrilling enough.

I am now on my way to possessing fluency in a language that can best be described as Western tonal music.

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