Something has opened in me and I’m now ready, willing, and able to receive writing and music back into my life. It’s been too long since I’ve held a pencil in my hand and witnessed it spilling words onto the clear white pages without the constant belittling eye of my inner critic. And it’s been too long since music has stirred my soul, speaking to my heart and moving my body without the ever-present sharp tongue of my inner cynic.
It seems like a lifetime ago when I wore my guitar on my back, carried a pencil in my ponytail, and kept a notebook in the back pocket of my jeans. Back then, everything I experienced through my senses was absorbed by the sage that is my soul and translated into language that helped me understand the world, and myself. And if there wasn’t music around me for my physical ears to hear, there was always music inside me pumping through my veins with a steady pulsating response to the beating of my heart.
Then one day, someone read my journals and the world around me became dull. Music became noise – noise that distracted my brain that needed to focus instead on being a protector, noise that irritated my soul like fingernails on a chalkboard. Words became sour sarcasm stuck in the back of my throat. Eventually, I broke my pencils and sold my guitar.
And for more than two decades, I experienced life from behind a thick, dark shroud. All the hues faded. All the music, chaotic clanging, stifled the words. I learned to manage sound and covet silence. learned to turn away from approaching words, convincing myself that half-thoughts were sufficient.
There was never any sort of sorrow or longing for the absence of music or writing, and no lamenting the loss of brilliance as I had once known in the world around me. There wasn’t space within me for any of that. Closing doors to effort and desire served me just fine.
And yet, like a squirming fetus in the womb, my soul stirred and shifted. Sometimes it was still, and sometimes It kicked and turned. It allowed me to ignore it while I closed doors. And yet, the soul cannot really be ignored, can it? While the mind ignored the loss, truth stirred.
I recognized the shift because I felt the sweet caress of music flowing through my heart. I listened, wondering at first if the music was outside me, or melodies in the cells of my body. It was both! I felt lighter in my body. Oh, how I welcomed the sounds! A couple of days later, I sat in the grass under a tree and wrote freely in a brand-new journal.
I checked, and it wasn’t a fluke. Something has opened. Like Bluejays returning to my backyard after a long, dark winter, writing and music have returned to my life.
I’d like to celebrate this!
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