Let's take music. I've been playing my guitar every night for the last week. My skill tends to spike and plateau, not so coincidentally corresponding to dramatic resurgences of musical passion. Or rather, it does coincide, but not in the seemingly random way we refer to as a coincidence. Coincidence has come to mean "arbitrary intersection of fate," but so many coincidences, like Brownian motion, have ultimately mechanical paths leading logically from one point to the next. And who says fate is arbitrary, anyway? Certainly all fate is not, although sometimes it appears maliciously unconcerned.
Sometimes I listen to a piece of music, or watch a performer, and I feel like my purpose for life is rapturously clear. But, how could I devote my life to music when it would mean I could not pursue my equal drive to serve, protect, and intercede for those who cannot serve, protect or represent themselves? Or further, when either choice would mean I could not devote myself to the writing which can so consume me? I feel as though I have been given the passion and drive of three souls, all warring with one another for my destiny. Rather than having a multiple personality disorder, I have a multiple destiny disorder. Are there two people walking around aimlessly because I was given their ambitions by mistake? Would they like them back?
Had I only one ambition, I could devote myself to it wholeheartedly. As it is, they take turns winning supremacy. Right now, music has taken me away, and the feeling of being alone with my struggle to play, to express myself or someone else's feelings through me, guides and burns my spirit. It is 12:30 AM on what is now Sunday, the 17th of February. I was torn, driving home, between writing this and playing music. Having failed to write for so long, I decided to take one of the many topics on my mind and write about it, then go upstairs and play. [shrug] I don't seem to have kept to one topic, but oh how it's all related!
AARGH!! How I long to take the stage, to make people feel something, truly feel, to know what is in my heart and hold it as their own, to cry, to love, to rage, to laugh as I cry, love, rage and laugh. Can I sway people with my words, can I take them to a place they might not have reached on their own, can I learn to make music like the people have who have so affected me? Will I play my guitar the way Sarah plays her piano? Can I ever learn to sing, force and mold my voice into true notes, wield it as a powerful instrument in its own right? Sarah sings with the voice of an angel, with a spirit only a human can possess. But how can I say, "if only I had her talents?" What of the talents I was given? And thus I take what I have, and I will fight and fight and fight, and I WILL become the master of the expression of my soul. I was told tonight that I had vocalized someone's heart in a way she could never have herself, and I had spoken with eloquence and silver. Surely I can channel that gift for expression into a different venue. I can take all the passion, all the eloquence, and bleed it into my fingers and throat, and sing and play with the same virtuousity used to channel pure empathy into words.
I'm going to have to sleep, but I will write more later. For now, music awaits, and I will grow ever stronger, more controlled, simultaneously more methodical and purer, and I will alchemize emotion and intellect into sound. It will happen: I have no choice, nor do I wish it any other way.
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