While on a plane to Asia, a part of me felt so heavy and she picked up the phone to type this note for me.
What feels fun? Why doesn’t music feel fun? It feels heavy. Am I really just done with it and refusing to be done with it? Is there too much trauma in my body associated with music for me to now create through it, despite it, with it, ever without it? It feels stale and old and painful. Something fresh feels fun.
It’s the structure. Music is math. It must all fit so perfectly in the grid. I love the feeling of being free with paint on my fingers. Any mess I make is perfection. With music, the mess is just mess. With my voice, vocal improvisation, chanting, humming, cooing, and trilling around in the air waves…this is where I feel freedom in music. Give me a microphone and a dark soundproof room. Leave me completely alone so I know with certainty no one can hear me and I will open the channel. When there are no rules, there is just play and mess is good and through this I find a way to express whatever has felt stuck inside for too long.
I can get into music through dance. When I hear music from the outside or from the inside of me and I am able to relax the muscles around it. Then and only then the muscle ripples through the tissues I inhabit and it moves them effortless. The music in literally inside me, enlivening this bag of flesh.
I still hear the warning tension. Music can eat you alive. It can completely take over. I don’t want to loss the other parts of me to or for the obsessive love of music. If I let it flow through, I don’t know how to shut off and balance. When I think of music, I feel so raw and vulnerable. When I feel music I feel free.
I don’t like people, especially my parents, hearing me sing about my deep dark pain. It’s very exposing and yet all I want to do is expose myself. What do I keep for myself that does not also belong to everyone? I wish I just wrote happy songs that felt good. Why do I sing so much pain? Because it is how I drain pain from my body. I am so free and at peace, joyful and energized after I release the tension into the sound space and realize I didn’t need to hold on so tightly to it anymore.
I have memories of people who were not comfortable holding or even witnessing my pain. These moments created a feeling in me that my pain is unwanted, not welcome and only tolerated. I have learned to love the pain, to love everything I see inside me. In doing so, I love all that I am, all that I contain. With this much acceptance, tension release and all emotions, light and dark, are able to process through the body. No emotion, painful or pleasurable, is meant to stay in the body for long. They are all just waves passing through. It takes a gross amount of courage for me to face all the waves and I only proceed because I love emerging from the water cleansed.
When I started making music, I was enchanted into a world of fantasy. The dream world isn’t as interesting to me anymore. The dream got me out of bed and practicing piano before work. The dream got me stepping out of my comfort zone with hope that I was capable. The dream got me going and kept me going. Now the skills are rooted in my body and growing. Peace in the present is more interesting to me now.
Desiring simplicity, longing for liberation from this mental chaos, I walked through the airports burdened and resentful. I wished I were traveling lighter with just a bikini, diving mask, Kindle, journal, guitar, and GoPro. My body felt swollen in the airports as I carried musical equipment across the globe. I left on this journey, afraid to choose. I resisted the approach of less being more, though I did my best to integrate it. I’ve carried the burden with hope that it would be worth something beautiful. Traveling with this weight is difficult. Under heavy bags on my shoulders, bags under my eyes, bags in my mind, I wasn’t able to listen to my body. Maybe I was listening to my body but it’s hard to hear in a raging storm. A month in the city of Seattle, in my old house with my greatest love, was discombobulating. My wires frazzled, my old habits and new habits glitching, I stuffed what felt essential into a 100L backpack and ripped myself away from comfort once again.
The simpler version of me is lovelier to be. She just likes playing with pretty colors and making silly faces. The music triggers a darker side who loves the stars and lights. What was all this for? Surely, I can be kinder to myself and find compassion for the parts of me who return me to music again and again. I’m sure they are lovely as well, just misunderstood and a bit afraid of coming out to play.
Love & Rainbows,
Cha Wilde
