Music

As far back as I can remember, I've been fascinated by sound. If something fascinates me, being a fan isn't enough; I have to try doing it myself.

Music has always been a source of composure and healing for me, as well as a stimulus for my imagination. When I was a kid (single-digit age), my mom owned a CD of classical music. I used to play Mozart's Rondo alla Turca on rewind, over and over. Something about it grabbed me. It sounded simple, but powerful. It was playful and aggressive at the same time. It felt like my own personality put into a song. It spoke to me. It was just one lonely instrument being played by one person on a piano, yet it filled my ears and my mind like a prophetic call. Everything hit perfectly. This music was made for me. I found infinitely more consolation in it than all the popular radio music that dominated the airwaves at the time. At night, after a stressful ordeal at school, I would put the CD back in the player, hit play, and drift away blissfully.

I began to breathe music to the point of rebellion. It was no surprise that when I started taking piano lessons, I was playing stuff in my 1st year that other students were playing in their 4th or 5th year. It was also no surprise that lessons would eventually get tedious and boring to me; after one year, I ventured off into my own. I laboriously taught myself how to play Rondo all Turca when I was 12, and what began as aural bliss became reality. It's amazing that, after all these years, it's still a piece that's as fresh and exciting as the day I first heard it.

I've always felt like a loner; I've always been socially awkward and I've never been good with words and expressing myself. Music has always been there to fill in those voids, and huge pools of emptiness in me were greatly fulfilled when I was 15 and started playing guitar. I got my first electric guitar when I was 16. I was meant to play this instrument. Before ever playing, I used to watch videos of Jimmy Page and Brian May play their guitars. They never sang. They never said anything. It was only them with their guitar versus the world. They spoke through their instruments, and spoke loudly. It was a perfect calling for someone like me. I wanted that feeling. I wanted to be heard, but in a way which I could do it. This was the way.

I remember the first time I performed guitar in front of an audience. It was at my friend's debutante ball. I had only been playing guitar for a few weeks, so I was not very good. I have to say that it wasn't a good performance at all. In fact, my dad, who knew how to play guitar, was very ashamed at my performance and said to me "You're not a guitarist". I didn't believe any of those words, because I knew I was a guitarist and nobody's words could stop my mission from becoming reality. Years later, I now have friends who took up guitar because of me. A discouraging father can have adverse effects.

Here I am now, at the crossroads of my life, often lost and confused with the world around me. But whenever I sit at the piano or pick up a guitar, the world starts to make sense again. I suppose this is a destined marriage for life. I will play as long as my body allows it.