Today I am taking part in a project with the network Blogger Village which is called Blogger Parade, where each member of the network writes a post about a topic drawn from a tea pot. This time the topic is music and I chose to write about my time as a musician. I hope you like it.
When I was eight I watched a concert of the local school of music’s teachers. Afterwards I told my father I wanted to learn how to play an instrument. He was very supportive, bought me an electric piano, paid for lessons, the whole deal. Even though I enjoyed playing, I enjoyed practicing a lot less but I always managed to learn my material in time. I also sang in the school choir.
When I was twelve I was approached by an old friend of my family. He was a musician that had started a band for his son and his two cousins of the same age and he wanted to recruit me. Later he gave up his spot for someone as old as us and we moved from covers to writing our own songs. We even recorded an EP – properly, not in our run-down practice room.
But then in secondary school, there was no choir and it was a wretched place in general. Most of the groundwork of my depression was laid there but I was still a happy kid outside of school. When I entered High School (or rather my country’s equivalent), I chose one with a choir and band. I was so hopeful that this was the place where everything would turn around.
But it didn’t live up to my enormous hopes, how could it? By the end of the first year, I was in my first major depressive phase and that was the end of my days as a musician. I kept playing for some time, but my passion was gone. For a long time, I considered it yet another thing I never followed through with, a failure in a long list of failures.
But now I consider it yet another thing my depression took from me. It wasn’t my fault. I could try to start again but I know I don’t have the energy, discipline or passion to do it. Will that ever change? I really don’t know.
Beyond that, I also realised that it wasn’t a failure at all. Even though I no longer play, I still achieved something. Not just the recording, I also made treasured memories and formed deep friendships. I also had an impact on the people around me. Maybe someone out there had their first kiss during one of our songs, or their first break-up.
Also, I still experience music in a special way. Did you know musicians are one of the few people whose profession can be guessed from brain scans? Sometimes, when my illness takes over and quenches my emotions, music is nothing but noise to me. But often it is one few things that that can snap me out of a phase or make a terrible time just slightly less terrible. I wonder if that were the case had I never picked up an instrument.
If any of you ever dropped something you put a lot of time and energy into and feel like you failed, consider how your life might look like without it. The things you experienced, the lessons learned, the joy and pain and everything else it brought you. As long as you took something away from it, you did not fail.
The Metaphorical of Delphi 