Life has a way of making us crave what we don’t have, overcompensating for what we wish we could be, and instead of realizing our potential, we chase.
At a young age, I was found with a growth in my ear, causing substantial hearing loss. I was a kid who just thought people weren’t speaking clearly. I had a lisp, I mumbled, and I thought that was true of everyone else. I will never forget the moment the doctor said, “huh” as he looked into my ear and beckoned my father to take a look. I didn’t know what would happen to me, or the journey that lay ahead, but the world started to make sense, and I started to listen.
I completely lost hearing in one ear as my surgeries processed. My removed hearing bone buried, cut off from it’s purpose, laying in wait for the years to come. Once it was returned to it’s home, I could hear again, and my soul yearned for sound.
I started to play guitar during my surgeries. It started as a means for escape until the vibrations started to sink in past what is heard. For the first time, I started to pay attention to how I listen. I didn’t listen to words, I couldn’t make them out, but I could identify rhythm, pitch, melody and timber. How easily this translated to an instrument. I could finally speak.
I went to college to study music, but was too risk adverse to make it a living. It became a hobby, a hobby that we get used to and without that push, one that slowly got left behind. My muscle became weaker. I started to accept the place I had, like I didn’t have the control over what was happening to me. Like there was another growth inside of me that I was blaming. Only this time, there was no doctor to help me.
I found ambient music in college, composing a project for a make believe “sci-fi museum.” It felt like I had discovered something no one else had before. A grid-less void of sound seemingly not possible. Everything had rhythm, a start, and a stop. Pure feeling, movement, untold stories – this is music.
When we are young, it’s easy to move onto the next thing. We love to play and try and play and try and move and play and try. In his book “The Creative Act,” Rick Rubin talks of creativity being a way of being. Creativity isn’t something you just do, it’s who you are. It’s a muscle that needs to be flexed. But it’s not always easy to stay healthy.
These works are my struggle to stay creatively healthy.
true to form 