:: worlds in words ::

(from http://www.sinfest.net)

There are a couple things I miss from my old life. Not too many – mainly because I didn’t have to give up many things – but the thing I miss the most of all is music. Most specifically, the music I was making with the band that I had to leave when I joined the military.

I wish there was a way for me to describe what music is to me, what it does to me – and what it’s been over the course of my entire life. Music was the development of my freedom, my distinction, my personality. Music was my refuge, my shelter, my sanctum. Looking at my music library now, you’ll find stuff from Gordon Lightfoot to Simon and Garfunkel; Billy Joel to Elton John; Metallica to Blind Guardian; Dispatch to Phish; Queen to Scorpions; and the list goes on.

I began playing piano. I played piano from grade one all the way through grade eleven or so, going through the Royal Conservatory of Music programme. I never really enjoyed it, you know, when you play instruments at that age it’s forced upon you more likely than not; and so it was with me. I hated to practice, I hated playing to the metronome, I hated studying theory and chords and arpeggios and cadences. I never practiced my scales. I rarely even practiced my pieces. And still I went to competitions, and still I passed my exams. My piano teacher often expressed frustration and repeatedly said that if I would just put some effort into it, I could be a great pianist.

Trouble is, I never wanted to be a great pianist.

I must’ve gotten my first guitar, what, six years ago or so. It was a Yamaha Pacifica in a nauseating shade of light blue. I remember gripping a power chord, probably the simplest thing you can do on a guitar, and giving it a hard strum with the amp on overdrive. It made a good sound. A nice, hard sound. I’m only on my third guitar now, but I’ve probably put more practice into my guitar in the past month than I ever put into piano over all my years of playing.

Music taught me a lot of interesting lessons in life. One is that even if you don’t like something, if you try hard, you can get good at it. A corollary to that was that even if you have a natural talent for something, if you don’t put effort into cultivating that talent, then one who does not have the talent but does put forth the time and effort can easily surpass you. Talent could only carry you so far, short of being born an absolute genius. Refinement was the key.

Another thing I learned was that it didn’t matter how smart you were if you didn’t practice. You might be able to sight-read a complicated piece, figure out all the nuances of how it should be played, the dynamics of the piece, and be able to hear it perfectly in your mind as it should be. But unless you actually put your fingers to the keys, it doesn’t matter. Because you don’t play with your mind, you play with your fingers.

I picked up a keyboard the other week to do a bit of sampling and backtrack work for a collaborative piece a bunch of us have been working on over the internet. On a whim, I let my fingers take over. I still remember all my scales. Majors and minors. My arpeggios, my sevenths. I remember most of a piece that I did for a competition years and years ago. This strange thing called muscle memory, that’s what keeps all these things in my fingertips when I haven’t even touched a piano for over half a decade.

What music taught me over all these things is that nothing matter unless you have – whatever you call it. Heart. Soul. Feeling. Depth. Unity. It’s true on the piano, it’s true on the guitar, and it’s true of anything we do in life, not just music. My fingers can go through the motions. Sure, and that’s just noise. It’s vibrations in the air. That’s what I played for most of my piano days until the very end, until I started understanding music and not just playing it. When I took a piece and made it my own. Messy, cloudy, moody – mine. A thunderous cacophony of confusion and muddled emotions.

I spent a lot of time on the guitar. I played everything, but mostly rock and metal. Eventually my tastes calmed down a bit and our band began to transition, all at once, into a jazz-blues-funk rock fusion band. I learned to play the bass.

Music isn’t just background noise to me. Music is the very heart of life, the beating pounding drums of the rhythm that permeates through all our souls. When I listen to music, it changes me. My breathing shifts and goes in time to the rhythm of the song. I can feel my heartbeat sync. It alters my mind state, my mood, my thinking processes. It’s not just words and notes and noise. It’s a power, it’s a kind of magic that we humans have tamed, like calling on a distant god.

Not just that, but music isn’t something intangible. It’s something real, it’s something physical – for me, it is. Even when I’m sitting back and listening, it isn’t a passive experience. It is alive and active and engaged. I can feel the music moving in me, moving me, wanting to take my body and become something greater. When I listen to a track that’s brilliantly written with piercing, poetic lyrics, powerful music, and perfect mixing, it’s a religious experience. It comes above just enjoyment and it becomes spiritual ecstasy. It uplifts me, it brings me beyond. It inspires me.

If there is one thing I could wish to be, it’s a musical genius. Probably not, probably given the choice I’d wish for a billion dollars like most people. But I think that given a choice for my happiness, I would choose the first. It’s been so long since I’ve sat down and written a song, it took me about half a day to be happy with a minute-and-a-half segment on three instruments. And even then, I was struggling.

I guess I really don’t know where I’m going with this. It’s just been sitting on my heart for a couple days, but I can’t find the words – much less at 0300 hours – to describe how it feels. The trancelike state where I can feel the music, not just physically, but a spirit of the music that moves me. The uplifting unspeakable ecstasy as I am transposed from myself to the limitless, conjoined in the infinite, unbound by matter. The indescribable exhilaration of writing music with others who, somehow, are in tune with you and yet independent of you, compiling into a singular piece that is greater than all of you combined. Of giving birth to something greater than yourself.

For those who couldn’t tell, the clip at the top was a demo recording of one of our first songs from my former band, Dialogos.