for all the words that writing has dragged screaming from my head, music has poured them back in through my ears;
for every taunting tap of my pen, music has imparted rhythms and melodies more beautiful than anything i could fathom;
for the cacophony of voices and stories cascading around my head, music has offered order and peace in its delicately crafted, blissfully organised bars and beats.
you may think me cynical, an old and tired writer,
who has had enough of complex words and stories,
who has exhausted of worlds to create,
who has resigned themselves to simplicity -
but rather, i implore you to consider the contrary:
writing and music – the taker and the giver,
the push and pull, the ebb and flow,
the unbroken cycle that can never, ever end
for risk of tipping the scales and disrupting the delicate balance.
what is writing in silence?
what is writing with nothing but the words in your head to keep you company?
how can you go on writing and writing and writing with nothing to replenish what you spill out onto the page?
music does in three minutes what i wish i could in a hundred pages –
commands its audience to feel every complementary and conflicting emotion,
believe in love one moment and the next to curse its name,
experience life and death and everything in between –
all in the minutes of a single song.
music crafts entire worlds in an instant that feel as if they have been there forever,
gives life to characters who will only exist for mere minutes but remain for eternity.
my stories are borne of my playlist:
for every tragedy, there is a song to reflect that misery,
and for every happy ending, the joy is to be found in melody and rhythm;
emotion derived from crescendo and diminuendo,
characters created vicariously from the lives of those in song.
even these words now
would not be written without the music in my ears,
coursing through my veins,
clearing my mind of any disruptive, noisy thought that does not belong on this page.
my playlist is my story,
places and people all crafted as a song,
music flowing the peace and order and clarity into the deafening chaos of my mind.
