Warning: this is a very disjointed piece of writing. I have a lot of thoughts and my connecting thread is the title to this piece, and not a lot else.
*ALSO! this is another post from the vault. I’ve been writing off and on for months but haven’t got around to posting, so I’m uploading everything to hopefully start being more consistent with Medium Smart.*
Like every annoying 20-year-old humanities student you’ve ever met (and hopefully you haven’t met many) I am trying to teach myself guitar. It is not going very well.
As someone who describes themself as a ‘singer-songwriter,’ I felt like I owed it to myself to diversify. I will say that in a sense, that term is very accurate to describe me. I sing to myself all day, whether it’s quietly under my breath as I galumph around campus, or slightly louder when I get back to the flat, or, on the rare occasion I visit home, very loudly, so as to get it out of my system in our essentially soundproof back room. And in terms of writing, in an average week I probably churn out around 3-5 rhyming confessionals set to four-chord progressions; whether or not these are substantive enough to count as songs is debatable, but I sing them anyway. I feel like for a long time I would have probably identified myself as a poet if asked, back to primary school age. I remember sitting at our huge grey PC and writing short poems and songs on Microsoft Word, and saving them away in niche and misleadingly named folders, as God forbid anyone find and read them. But I was always delighted when a creative writing project came up at school. I got a trophy at my year 6 leavers’, the ‘excellent writing’ award. It might be my proudest win.
I grew up in church, so I sang weekly among the congregation, and I was always jealous of churches that had choirs. But I was in the school choir, and I went to every performance. I don’t remember being an outstanding singer, but sometimes I was offered a solo or a duet. I was a frumpy, geeky, bespectacled and mousy kid who hadn’t learnt how to make people laugh yet, so it felt monumental to be offered a chance to have people look at me for a good reason, a reason I chose. In year three, I was the only finalist from my year in the juniors’ talent show. I think I sang something from a musical, Consider Yourself or Somewhere Over the Rainbow. My mum didn’t go, but my dad did, and I think my sister as well. I didn’t win of course, I wasn’t even a runner-up, but my dad hugged me very tight afterwards and told me he was very proud of me, and it’s been a high I’ve been chasing ever since. I continued to perform until year nine or ten, in most school concerts at Christmas and end of year. But I didn’t take music GCSE, and perhaps as I hit puberty it was less endearing to watch me fidget on stage and try my best not to go flat as my friend accompanied me in some Adele song, so after a couple auditions that resulted in me being asked, “could you play as everyone walks in, instead of during the main show,” I stopped trying. Now I’m twenty and I haven’t performed since; I would simultaneously give anything to perform but cannot think of anything worse.
In year twelve, I made a Soundcloud and posted a few songs I’d written to it, so my friends and girlfriend at the time could listen if they wanted. One of my songs got over 200 listens and it scared me; another song my girlfriend showed a friend who took film at college, and he asked if he could make a music video to it for a project, to which I said yes. That’s something that I think of every so often and cringe- the music video coursework project could be out there somewhere, and I never deleted or privated the Soundcloud, so I can only be grateful it wasn’t under my real name. When my best friend was hospitalised for the first time while I was in year thirteen, I would record song for her on voice memo and send them over iMessage. She would always tell me that she loved them, which ones were her favourites. One of them, she apparently showed to a friend, who asked for the lyrics and chords, so she could play it herself. I don’t know if she ever did, but or if that even happened, or whether she just knew how hard I was trying to comfort her with my songs and wanted to reassure me that it was working. To one song, I think I remember her replying, “it’s nice, but a little sad.”
I made the very Chad statement to my best friend last spring that I was going to ‘focus on my music’ that summer. It might have been an excuse not to get a job, but it was true. I played, wrote and recorded so much stuff that moving back to uni away from my piano felt like cutting off a limb. The funny thing about it all is that I am by no means a musician. I took a couple of years of piano lessons early in secondary school which didn’t even culminate in a grade one certificate, let alone any type of playing skills that a bystander would want to listen to. Before that, I was in guitar club in year five, where I learnt the basic chords, and quickly went on to forget them when I lost my guitar at the end of the school year, understandably infuriating my mum. I can’t read sheet music; now, when I play, I use guitar tabs whether I’m playing guitar or piano. I know enough chords to enjoy playing and singing my favourite songs, and I can play piano by ear if you give me enough time. There’s just something about going home and sitting down at the piano which is the greatest feeling in the world. It’s my space; I’m the worst pianist out of all my sisters but I play the most often. Sometimes my mum tells me she notices the quiet in the hour post-midnight when I’m not home, and misses me clunking out my tunes. It feels validating that my absence is noticed in the silence downstairs.
Now I have a private instagram page with about 15 followers. I made it when I came back to uni in September, because I meant to join the songwriting society, but couldn’t bring myself to take such a big step. I posted a few recordings I’ve made and put them on there for my friends to see, if they want to. I decided on a mix of covers and originals, to be less vulnerable, and I made sure to pin a lengthy self-deprecating explanation that I know I am not a gifted musician by any stretch of the imagination, but music is my hobby and my passion, and there is nothing I love more. I think it is okay to love something with all your heart, and to want to spend all your time doing, and to still not be very technically good at it. It is an art form in a way, allowing yourself very publicly to be seen in a vulnerable time, where you can watch me struggle for a second when I miss a chord, contort my face as I attempt to hit a note, or hold back a sigh and push on when I go flat. It is worth it that someone might laugh at me when my mum tells me she sometimes plays the videos, not to really listen to the music as such, but to hear me. It is all caught on camera, my failings and my ambitions and my autobiographical lyrics that are out there to be heard. I know all this and I post it anyway. My goal is that one day I will not be so ashamed of myself and what I want, and I will post music publicly, and I will perform, or I will at least beg a friend to sit in the room with me and let me sing to her. I am not chasing perfection or recognition. What I want is to explore my boundaries, to be brave, to let myself do what I love freely and openly. And to do this I must accept that I am not good at my hobby, and that is OK.
When I sat down to write this I honestly had no idea where it was going to go. I came up with the title and then typed up my train of thought. I definitely did not plan on crying, but I did, a couple of times, mainly when I was thinking about my parents and how they react to my music. They have always wanted me to do my best. I’m at my very well ranked university studying a degree in something completely unrelated to music (although I did squeeze into an essay somewhere last year a paragraph about Lady Gaga) and I am succeeding; my grades are good and I will surely, hopefully go on to some middle-class graduate job where I process paperwork, wear business casual attire, and go home to a house with a garden. This is my best. I am doing MY best and achieving MY best. Do I still wish with all my heart I was at a conservatoire somewhere taking music theory classes and applying for ensemble roles in touring theatre productions? Of course I do; I would never have gotten in, never even thought about applying seriously. But I am so jealous of everyone I see who was brave enough to follow a passion and try to be a creative. And I think about when I would perform in concerts at school and no one from my family would come to watch, or when my dad would joke and say, “what’s that noise?” I know that what I am doing now is for the best, and I know I am going to work as hard as I can to get a job that pays well enough for me to have a big piano in my future house, maybe even a music room, maybe even lessons. I hope I will always love music as much as I do now.