So, how did your homework go? Could you see Music? What did he/she look like? How are you connected to him/her*?

This is one final essay and the student allowed me permission to use it.  It’s a long read, but I promise you, it’s worth it 🙂

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Music and I have a complex relationship.  There are times when we are inseparable, and times that we may fight.  Music is my best friend, my mother, and my shoulder to cry on when need it and always knows just what to say when I’m in a mood, because it sense my feelings and I also share my feelings with it.  It is a two-way street, just like every relationship, and it knows me better than I know myself.

I’ve had days where I really just miss my best friend, (name omitted), when we haven’t talked in a while and I miss her thoughts and the feeling of comfort that comes from an old friend.  I miss Music like I miss her.  On days where I’m too busy or just forget that to have a chat, I feel like there’s a person missing from my day.  My best friend, the one who wants to have a musical conversation with me about my angers and about things that make me smile, who will be my voice of reason and calm me down.  Music agrees with me and takes hold of my emotions; it goes past listening and creates with me.  I feel like Music knows me better than I know myself because there will be a day that we play and an emotion or feeling or thought will just come forward, and I was unaware of it before then.  Music makes me aware of all the things I’m feeling, always demanding that I open up and be myself with it.  But that doesn’t mean I always do.  Music and I have our fights, the days that I blame it as a cause of my frustrations and stresses.  The days that I practice music instead of play music and it tries to get me to open up and resist, and Music does not appreciate it.  It does not create beauty with me because I refuse to create beauty with it.  Those are the days that I have to walk away, instead of warring with it and causing more problems.  But somehow, we always work it out.  I realize that I can’t blame Music for being there for me and challenging my ideas and being my only escape from the world around me.  Because the world really does go away.  Music sends it to a place to be dealt with at a later date.  Time slows down for me while the world spins around us, so minutes turn into hours and worries evaporate into the air.  That is sometimes the reason why I blame Music for taking hours that I could have used to study, but our relationship is always stronger after those days because my mood is lighter from talking to my best friend.  And our connection is stronger and I realize that I needed those hours to sleep and, without it, I would be grumpy and unsettled for no apparent reason.  I shouldn’t resist it because it would be as silly as resisting sleep.  I try it sometimes, but it just leaves me in a bad state of mind.  Sometimes, that is why I feel like Music could be a motherly figure too.  It’s right a lot of the time, even when you don’t always want it to be.  It has a way of making you see things differently, as my mother always tells me to do.  It’s a warm hug when times are tough and I just need somebody to be there, telling me that it will all work out.  And I believe in Music because it believes in me.  It shows when I break through on something new that I felt I never would be able to do and, as I play, I feel my amazement and this sense of ease that says “I knew you could do it all along.”  It’s a confidence that Music gives me, not only in my musical studies, but in all other aspects of life.  The knowledge that I can do, create, and achieve when I simply apply myself and I don’t resist the improvement because it feels different, new or uncomfortable.  There should be no comfort zone in Music’s conversations.  No ‘too personal,’ ‘too different,’ or ‘too out of reach.’  There is only what you do when all limits and expectations go away and the pressures of life are gone.  Some of my best conversations are when the world feels like it’s about to crush me, and it takes me away.  I love it.  I always breath through and accomplish something in those moments, which is one of the reasons why it is unreasonable to blame Music because Music can only help me.  And that is why Music would be a mother or a best friend to me, really, it could be anybody who would love and support me and help me reach my full potential.  Father, teacher, sister… Music is them all.

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Isn’t that lovely? I just welled up when I read the awareness and thoughtfulness of this teen and their complex relationship to the art that they love.   I feel like Music knows me better than I know myself or I believe in Music because it believes in me.  Gush!

It’s amazing what kids will say if only you give them the opportunity to say it 🙂

Have a good week,
Kenley

*I feel badly in using “he/she” and “him/her” in a world of transgender awareness.  I know that sex isn’t totally binary, I just don’t know which pronouns or descriptors to use.  Help would be lovely, let me know!