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| "Looking back on my self-discovery, the reason for my journey was always to be accepted and loved." |
I love music. I mean I REALLY love music. It can pick you
up and transport you back to a moment in time: For me, music is my very own
personal time machine. The moment the song lifts you back to can be only minutes
long or it can be a whole year of your life. In just a few bars your song replays
those emotions, the smells, the sights and the moment overwhelms you, washes
over you. That is why I love music.
I had been trying to write my book for a number of years,
but every time I sat down to write it I would get only a few pages in and then
scrap the idea as it never really felt right. Essentially I wanted to write a
story of self-discovery - I knew the content of the story but not how to write
it. It was music that finally lifted the dreaded writer’s block. On another long, unproductive evening sat in
front of my computer, I pressed play on my iPod: Suddenly the words were
flowing and it all felt right.
The music playing took me back to a hugely important
period of time in my life and it allowed the words to pour out of my head and
onto paper. It took me back to travelling and the time I found ‘me’. It may sound
very self-absorbed and like a ‘first world problem’ to some, but we each have
personal challenges and mine was accepting who I was.
It should be very easy for the words to flow when you are
writing from personal experience, but music is what kick-started it for me. The
book is a fictional tale, but the emotions and self-realisation experienced by
the protagonist are not and I make no apology for that. I want my audience to
relate and to realise that we all face personal challenges and, although
sometimes they feel overwhelming, given time we come out the other side wiser,
stronger and enlightened. At least that is the theory: I know sometimes as humans we also like to
repeat the same mistakes over and over again!
I use music as a key theme throughout the book, I guess,
as a way of citing tracks that I feel are lyrically relatable. I see it as a
musical education for the reader, but also for myself as the book is based in a
time before my own adolescence and reference.
So it seems this week’s blog is slightly more serious
than I intended it to be, but, then, there is a serious message that underlines
the story in my book. Looking back on my
self-discovery, the reason for my journey was always to be accepted and loved.
I didn’t like the thought that some people may dislike me due to the person I
fell in love with: After all, falling in love is chemical and you cannot choose
who that person is. It seems unfair to live in a world where love, which is
usually an amazing and happy experience, can be tarnished by fear and lack of
acceptance. It makes the world a darker place where you cannot share what
should be one of the happiest periods of your life.
Like Frank Ocean said in the song Bad Religion, ‘I swear
I’ve got three lives balanced on my head like steak knives, I can’t tell you
the truth about my disguise, I can’t trust no one’. It seems sad that a song about loving someone
is called Bad Religion and ends with the lyrics ‘Only bad, only bad religion
could have me feeling the way I do’.
On a brighter note though, the world is evolving and it
is becoming more accepting. I hope my little story contributes to just one
person being better educated and less ignorant around the topic of sexuality.
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