Music has always been such a great method for me to just be myself. Interestingly enough though, whenever I play my saxophone, I love to play with my eyes closed. There's nothing better than playing in front of a crowd, yet there's nothing scarier.... At its peak for me, I feel as if I'm floating on air; I'm sent away to another place that no one can hurt me and that I'm just completely free. What's scary though is that I lay myself out there for everyone to see for those "x" amount of minutes: raw and exposed.
There are times that I play, that I feel as if I've got to be one of the worst musicians ever. I battle with the idea that any moment, someone will walk away saying that they've heard better, or even worse, that someone gets up, grabs their sax and plays next to me. But then, there are those moments that I feel as if I'm flying through the sky, free as a bird and just smiling over the world. My struggles come out when I play: my pain, my hurt, my emotions, insecurities. They all come out in a bundle of notes and melodies, masqueraded about by a simple searcher of life.
When I look back at it all, I'm thankful that I can play by ear. I don't know why I was given this gift, but it helps me escape from my surroundings. I guess that's probably why I choke when I sing karaoke. I'm singing songs that I don't feel from my heart and have to keep my eyes open to read the words while noticing dozens of eyes looking at me from all over. When I play though, I let my inner self come and fly about the world. For those few minutes, I have an existential moment of smiles and tears; I take a piece of my heart and hand it to every onlooker so they can see me at my most vulnerable.
Music is that powerful to me; even if I'm not the best musician out there, when a child comes up to me and tells me that they started to play an instrument because they heard me play... That's enough for me.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Treading on the Heels of Dreams
Well it's been a minute since I've been able to sit down and write
again. Life's been keeping me busy with work, side projects and
thinking. It may not come as a secret to a few of you, but to those who
don't know.... I'm a total closeted chick flickoholic. I have this
weird tendency to relate my life to a bunch of chick flicks; don't ask
me why, I guess life is better with a story line at times. For every
major area in my life, I can pretty much assign myself one or two chick
flicks to relate it with. Relationships? Breakfast at Tiffany's and
Pretty Woman. Work? You've Got Mail. Life? Eat, Pray, Love and
Almost Famous. The list goes on. I'm sure it's quite the unhealthy way
of looking at life through the eyes of movies, but perhaps that's just
my inner idealist coming out.
Idealism. It can be good and bad depending on how you look at it. Being an idealist is probably one of my best qualities, but it also is one of my biggest weaknesses. For example, I've always wanted that relationship where I'm swept off of my feet and truly loved through thick and thin for who I am; where I come home and my partner wants to know everything about my day, where we can laugh and talk the night away while sipping wine or hot chocolate and just enjoy each others company. Yet the downside of this kind of thinking is that we don't consider how the imperfections that we carry as humans can end up bursting our merry bubble of glee: cheating, not accepting your partner who they were/are, the list can go on. I try to only wish and see the good in it all, even when reality may be trying to make me question my naivete; I guess that when something bad does come my way from my partner, it hurts me that much more. I allow myself to live in this fantasy world where I try so hard to see something that may not exist, because I've craved it for so long. I've never claimed to be perfect in relationships, but I know that if I care about someone, there are things I just wouldn't do to cause them pain; most of the time, I've let myself think that I've found the one and my Lifetime movie love story has commenced: that's blown up in my face more times than I would like to remember. Yet I still see myself applying this sense of idealism in every facet of my life, from work, to ambitions, to signs... everything.
I want to keep believing in the ideals of life, but I've come to learn that even ideals need help. These last few years I built my life on what I thought was my "perfect" life. A partner, pets, home, a job that I enjoyed... all I needed was a white picket fence and a newspaper thrown at my doorstep every morning. Fast forward to present time and my hunt for what I thought was happiness is completely different. I'm single, still have my pets, still have my home, and the white picket fence you may ask? Well I've got that in storage for when I need to bring it out.
My life at the moment isn't the utopian paradise I fantasized about in my head now, but just like every chick flick, the main character always goes through a time of self discovery and change before happiness reappears. So these last few weeks I've been seeking just that: change. My condo, something that for so long I looked upon as an anchor to my free spirit, will undergo a change. It's been the same for the last almost 3 years I've had it; I need to change it to start anew. I've got bring it up to speed with where my life is now and where I want it to go in the future. There are memories that are still strong in these four walls, others that have to go and more to be made; I just have to finally take those steps that are necessary for positive change in my life. I'm starting to get back involved in music and helping fellow musicians out, which I'm truly enjoying, because through that, more doors to opportunities and friendships are presenting themselves to me. I just don't know how to explain it, but my life needs change; for once in a long time, I think I'm at that point where I can finally say I'm ready for it.
It's been a hard road, with a lot of pit falls and scars, but perhaps it's been through these hard times that my ideal world has started to slowly reveal itself to me. Maybe I've been trying so hard to see the world through these rose colored glasses of perfection that I truly have lost the ability to see the beauty of the imperfect. Picasso once said that every act of creation is first an act of destruction. That's what I've slowly been doing lately; I have had to destroy pieces of me in hopes of becoming something better. It's going to always be a work in progress, but it's a step forward. I still stick to my ideals and my fantastic world, but I've started to allow flaws and imperfections into it more and more. It's through these flaws that beauty is shown to us and it's these flaws that make us human. One of my flaws may be that I'm an idealist, but this imperfect idealist is starting to realize that perhaps its reality, with its flaws and all, that is already leading us all to our own ideal worlds.
Idealism. It can be good and bad depending on how you look at it. Being an idealist is probably one of my best qualities, but it also is one of my biggest weaknesses. For example, I've always wanted that relationship where I'm swept off of my feet and truly loved through thick and thin for who I am; where I come home and my partner wants to know everything about my day, where we can laugh and talk the night away while sipping wine or hot chocolate and just enjoy each others company. Yet the downside of this kind of thinking is that we don't consider how the imperfections that we carry as humans can end up bursting our merry bubble of glee: cheating, not accepting your partner who they were/are, the list can go on. I try to only wish and see the good in it all, even when reality may be trying to make me question my naivete; I guess that when something bad does come my way from my partner, it hurts me that much more. I allow myself to live in this fantasy world where I try so hard to see something that may not exist, because I've craved it for so long. I've never claimed to be perfect in relationships, but I know that if I care about someone, there are things I just wouldn't do to cause them pain; most of the time, I've let myself think that I've found the one and my Lifetime movie love story has commenced: that's blown up in my face more times than I would like to remember. Yet I still see myself applying this sense of idealism in every facet of my life, from work, to ambitions, to signs... everything.
I want to keep believing in the ideals of life, but I've come to learn that even ideals need help. These last few years I built my life on what I thought was my "perfect" life. A partner, pets, home, a job that I enjoyed... all I needed was a white picket fence and a newspaper thrown at my doorstep every morning. Fast forward to present time and my hunt for what I thought was happiness is completely different. I'm single, still have my pets, still have my home, and the white picket fence you may ask? Well I've got that in storage for when I need to bring it out.
My life at the moment isn't the utopian paradise I fantasized about in my head now, but just like every chick flick, the main character always goes through a time of self discovery and change before happiness reappears. So these last few weeks I've been seeking just that: change. My condo, something that for so long I looked upon as an anchor to my free spirit, will undergo a change. It's been the same for the last almost 3 years I've had it; I need to change it to start anew. I've got bring it up to speed with where my life is now and where I want it to go in the future. There are memories that are still strong in these four walls, others that have to go and more to be made; I just have to finally take those steps that are necessary for positive change in my life. I'm starting to get back involved in music and helping fellow musicians out, which I'm truly enjoying, because through that, more doors to opportunities and friendships are presenting themselves to me. I just don't know how to explain it, but my life needs change; for once in a long time, I think I'm at that point where I can finally say I'm ready for it.
It's been a hard road, with a lot of pit falls and scars, but perhaps it's been through these hard times that my ideal world has started to slowly reveal itself to me. Maybe I've been trying so hard to see the world through these rose colored glasses of perfection that I truly have lost the ability to see the beauty of the imperfect. Picasso once said that every act of creation is first an act of destruction. That's what I've slowly been doing lately; I have had to destroy pieces of me in hopes of becoming something better. It's going to always be a work in progress, but it's a step forward. I still stick to my ideals and my fantastic world, but I've started to allow flaws and imperfections into it more and more. It's through these flaws that beauty is shown to us and it's these flaws that make us human. One of my flaws may be that I'm an idealist, but this imperfect idealist is starting to realize that perhaps its reality, with its flaws and all, that is already leading us all to our own ideal worlds.
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