If you’ve been around for a while, you’d probably know that music is a pretty big part of my life – me being a musician and everything.
And so, the action and process of listening to music is a pretty big deal in my head. And over the years, I’ve developed and discovered a thing about myself with respect to this unreal action and process of listening to music.
When I listen, I listen to a particular sound, vibe, genre or artist for a while – for a long, distinct period of time. Whatever I’m listening to complements whatever I’m enduring in life at the moment.
And so this inadvertently manifests as musical phases in my life: special pieces of music representing different durations and moments of my life. It’s almost like a soundtrack to that situation in my life.
To explain, when I first began the 11th grade, all I would listen to was Melodrama by Lorde and Hopeless Fountain Kingdom by Halsey. These works of music held my hand as I grew into a new person into a new life. It was a conflict of identity, detachment and growth. Melodrama helped me to rise and truly hold onto myself, and Hopeless Fountain Kingdom propelled me and filled me with boundless confidence.
Like this numerous works of music have completed parts of my life and have helped me assimilate the changes in the world around. While it wasn’t that I wouldn’t keenly listen to any other music, it was just that this latched onto my heart and made it’s home in my head.
And this is how I’ve lived ALL my life. Since the age of 6, to be more precise. And so, for a 17 year old, I’ve known no other way to live and listen to music.
Oftentimes, in life, I was come to points where the music I was listening to stopped feeling the same way. It no longer had the same impact on me. And so I began to outgrow a phase. I would be in a purgatorial place for a while, but eventually find a new sound or vibe or artist. Transition periods stayed true to their name, and merely acted as bridges to new musical experiences and lives.
All this is well and fine.
Except until now. Where the transitional period has become the main period. I am not listening to anything that belongs to a larger musical phase of my life. I’m bouncing back and forth from trashy pop music and random pieces of music from 2008. In this period, there is no consistency or familiarity in what I listen to now. Nothing to unite them. And it’s not one of those cases where this is a musical phase of its own.
It’s just a dead-end. A standstill.
Now, there’s no sound.
And this, I realised isn’t the fault of the music, but really is a reflection for how my life is right now. There is stress and chaos. Insane bouts of anxiety and exhaustion. Things are as steady as a ship in a storm. Needless to say, things aren’t good. This is also part of why I haven’t written for a while.
But really, this is more of an opportunity to look for a new sound. Each phase of music functions to support and help me. In this moment of distress, it’s a new musical phase that can help me – that can help me channel and centre myself. I mean, it’s that its purpose?
And so now, I’m on this new search for a sound. Searching for a new vibe or artist or genre or album or something that can hold my heart from running off into the wild.
But I’m not going to be desperate about it. I won’t start a wild goose chase. I’ll step forward from my end, but let the music come to me. In the meantime, I always have Melodrama and Hopeless Fountain Kingdom to hold me still.
___________
Hello, I have returned. And I promise to stay. Things aren’t optimum, but I won’t lose hope just yet.
Love and kindness in infinite amounts,
lost.
cover image from: https://weheartit.com/entry/59343319?context_page=2&context_query=gramaphone&context_type=search
LostInTheGreatEscape 