The music in me.
Nights like this, my mind's alive. Nights like this, my mind goes wild.
Lately, I've been searching for variety in my means of creative expression. With my writing, I rarely force it. I wait for the inspiration to wake me up at midnight, or naturally come to me when I least expect it. The only problem I have with this is the inconsistency at which the "subjects" of my cathartic releases land in my mind. I guess it takes the mind some time to gather enough qualitative data from the world around you, your experiences and to analyse it well enough that your intuition can create positive schemas about the world. I guess those are the things I write about here right?
Very recently, I started making music on FL Studio. I guess you can count this as getting in touch with my inner child again. When I was really young (somewhere between 7-12), my immediate elder brother, Oseghale, taught me how to make beats on what was then known as "Fruity Loops". It's one of the most fond childhood memories I have. These were the things I was doing while my mates were learning how to ride bicycles (I still don't know how to ride a bicycle but that's a story for another day). Growing up, at some point, this memory somehow disappeared from my mind and was lost. This very fond memory resurfaced one day, while I was learning Python Programming and (for some reason) enjoying it lol. I was wondering, what dormant predisposition I had that might have influenced my ability to learn highly complex things so easily. Resurfacing the repressed memory of my "Producer" childhood was sort of, the "missing piece" to my self awareness.
Now, I have decided that one of the hobbies I'd invest my time and money into is...music. I restarted making beats in 2021 during my Master's. I will share some of the beats I've made when I am comfortable with my craft.
I have this karaoke microphone in my home that I have had for quite a while. One of the things I enjoy about living alone is that I can sing at random times of the day and night and not worry that I'm disturbing anyone. Although, I'm well aware that I have neighbours so, I endeavour to be considerate lol.
I have never really thought of myself as someone that can actually sing. I don't really think I can. However, overtime I realised that singing is a subjective experience. It's art. No two people look at a piece of art and interpret it the same way. A good singer is one that is able to convey emotions with their voice, with confidence. No two singers actually sing the same way. People who have the emotional intelligence and emotional receptiveness to welcome emotional experiences will enjoy what they hear when someone is able to successfully convey emotions with their voice. However, people who are less driven by emotion would stop and stare, not understand and sometimes even criticise.
Lately, I have been able to gather a lot of confidence with my singing, enough to have the cojones to post random videos of me singing on social media.
This was a highly open and vulnerable thing to do and, actually, I received some positive feedback from people which made me happy. This encouraged me to post more videos of me singing, no matter how crude I may sound. However, as I said, there always subjectivity in art. I also, in the process was told by someone, in the most offensive way possible, that I can't sing. This was really painful to hear, firstly because, it's something I already believe and secondly because, why so mean?
That's the problem with vulnerability and having your heart on your sleeves. You keep yourself exposed to being hurt by people who can see that your buttons are very accessible. Why not push them?
I have always wondered what it is that a person does that makes people feel so comfortable disrespecting them? I've come up with a few things:
An inability to defend your boundaries.
Making yourself overly available to people who don't necessarily deserve that much access to you.
A lack of understanding of your own personal self-worth.
However, sometimes you can't avoid it because some people are just disrespectful by default and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. Sometimes, sad people tend to try to make others sad too, so that they are not alone in their misery.
These things I've bullet pointed above aren't things I'm going to expand upon. I'm highlighting them to plant a seed in the mind of any other "Highly Sensitive Person" like myself, reading this and trying to understand why for themselves.
I feel lucky to be the sort of person that criticism drives. Criticise me about something and watch me succeed in exactly what you said I couldn't do. They say success is the best revenge, right?
So, I'm going to definitely indulge in my hobby which is "making music" for my own personal entertainment because, I can actually sing and I can write poetry and I can make instrumentals. If you sing poetry into a microphone that is connected to FL studio and make an instrumental around the vocals to fit the melody (or make a melody and sing poetry on top of it), a song gets created. It's actually a fun experience but it makes you very hungry and thirsty after because you'd be stuck to your computer for 4 hours at a time trying to make it sound exactly how it sounds in your head. That's what hobbies are meant to do right? Hobbies are meant to feel consuming, revitalising and difficult to detach yourself from.
Dear Music, I'm glad to have you back on board.
I'll leave you with this. Here's a song called "Interference" by Tems. I think it kind of encapsulates how I feel.
Anyway, byeeee <3