Delicate Melody is designed to improve the lives of others through sharing the experience, strength, and hope of someone in recovery. Delicate Melody started out as a photoblog, but when I was released from a rehabilitation center, I decided to make blogging my new form of “cheap therapy,” as MereWisdom (dad) puts it. Ultimately, Delicate Melody contains my memories and whatever I’m going through in search for inspiration and help others through helping myself, because working with others (in whatever way we can) is what keeps us sober!

Delicate Melody is also designed to be about my music in recovery. My music has changed a lot as I change and like my tagline says: Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. Every day, we do things we don’t want to and trudge on through life. Work, school, etc. etc. Music, I believe, is the ultimate reliever. No matter what kind of day you’ve had, one can always sit back and relax to his or her favorite music. It’s the ultimate American past time. Creating music, however, is something all together different. When I play with a group whether it’s just a garage band or a full symphony, I feel a part of. Everything that happened that day melts away as I make music.

I’ve never known a musician who regretted being one. Whatever deceptions life may have in store for you, music itself is not going to let you down.
- Virgil Thompson

Feeling like we belong somewhere is the most important feeling we as humans can feel. God created us to love and to thrive. A lot of the books in the Bible were written as songs, as means of worship. I was writing an editorial for Journalism at school the other day and I wrote about music’s capability to brainwash. What we feed our subconscious thoughts can determine the outlook of a person. I’ll post that later, once it’s graded and I feel it’s good enough. The point is that for me music is how I keep myself sane in the insanity of the world.

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Besides my fundamental desire to become the “best” there is in blogging, a lot’s been going on lately. UIL was Saturday and for lack of better terms – we sucked. The judges apparently thought so as well. In both sight reading and contest prepared music we made 2-2-3s. 3 is the lowest score, 2 is in the middle, and 1 in the best. We made no 1s. I’m rather disappointed, but it’s more of a bruised ego than anything. Only one out of our four different string orchestras at school made sweepstakes (1-1-1) and it wasn’t even the top group – they made a 1-1-1 in contest music but a 1-1-2 in sight reading. Oh well. Today we were supposed to get audition music for the next year of orchestra, but our conductor hadn’t run all of it off, so we shall receive it tomorrow. I’m looking forward to it.

My greatest bit of news to share with the world: I have a job! I had an interview to day in response to an e-mail I had written, and I was accepted for the job. I start work tomorrow, and luckily it’s only after school and on Saturday. They’re closed Sunday. Anyway, the place is called World Music, and it’s a local music store right next to my AA meeting. How convenient is that? Quite literally, my AA home group is a few stores down from World Music. Both are within walking distance from the house. Tomorrow, I go in and I’ll be filing, organizing, and cleaning. I’m allowed to teach, but first I must get my own clients and refer them to the music shop. I’ll probably wait for the summer to start teaching again simply because… What’s the point of teaching middle school kids who’ve already had a year of teaching under another instructor? I like the fresh out of elementary school, just picked out their instruments kids. They’re much more fun! Anyway, I think the point I’m trying to make is that I’m VERY excited!

TAKS is coming up as well, and I’m not looking forward to it at all. I had a tutorial to go to this Saturday, but I had to go to UIL instead. Luckily, there’s one more this weekend. TAKS starts next Tuesday and I have testing Thursday and Friday as well. Joy! I plan to spend much of the weekend studying, preparing, and getting LOTS of sleep! I hope to score well on the TAKS tests. I’m also trying to get prepared (or at least start the process) of taking the ACTs and SATs. I need as many shots as I can get at those tests so I can take my best score and apply to a college that I really want to go to. Like Rice University in downtown Houston! That’s been my dream college for a while now, but I’ll probably have to transfer in after I go to University of Texas or North Texas State University for a while. I’ve decided not to go to community/junior college to start out simply because it’s too many transfers and I if I didn’t go to a major university before Rice, that’d be a HUGE leap from community college to a big prestigious school.

Although I have lots of college plans, I must first graduate high school, which is what I’m working on now. I’m taking two college dual credit courses next year – English and U.S. History. Aside from that, I also have to maintain a steady job (World Music, hopefully), eventually get a car, and be able to support myself financially. So, it’s a long process that will most likely take a couple of years, but I’m looking forward to it. It’s nice to be free and to grow and make my own decisions, which is definitely not something I was able to do a year ago.

I celebrated 11 months on the seventeenth of April, so that was really exciting. God’s definitely given me more than enough blessings in life, and I pray I continue! Until next time!

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Current band member cellists, Antero Manninen, Eicca Toppinen, Paavo Lötjönen, Perttu Kivilaakso, and along with the 2003 addition of drummer Mikko Siren are the new face for symphonic metal and cello rock.

Low staccato notes, beautiful melodic runs, as well as a wide range of notes from the bottom of the fingerboard to pulsing bass notes, Apocalyptica never ceases to amaze me. Their latest CD was released in 2007 and includes guests Adam Gontier, lead vocalist of Three Days Grace in “I Don’t Care”, which is my favorite song.

Although they’ve been around for a while, Apocalyptica is just now making their start in the U.S., being featured on Music Choice and MTV. Apocalyptica has amazing cello originals with some amazing guest vocalists such as Ville Valo of HIM and Lauri Ylönen of The Rasmus.

Apocalyptica is the best cello rock/symphonic metal band around and I strongly advise anyone who enjoys cello tributes or original string rock or metal songs to check them out.

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“Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” Have you ever loved something such as a hobby that it made you a better person? Have you ever lost that one special ting? If I didn’t have music in my life, whether it be creating music or just listening to it, I would not be here today. Music is my number one passion, my confidante, and the only thing that has kept me alive besides the Grace of God.

I think it’s crucial for everyone to have something they love – whether it’s a person place, hobby or idea that keeps them going and gives them guidance. For me, that thing is music. Music and performance have been in my life since I was a baby, still in my mother’s womb. My mother used to put headphones on her pregnant belly with me inside. I would jam out to Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, and Vivaldi. Once I grew older, I found the joy of my life. In middle school, I joined orchestra and started playing the double bass.

Really the double bass found me. I went to orchestra orientation and my new orchestra conductor asked me what I wanted to play. At that point in time, I had an attitude problem and I told her I really didn’t care. So she pointed at a big wooden instrument, bigger than a cello. I picked it up and even though I was tall, it still stood taller than me from the ground up. I experimentally plucked a string. It was actually the E string, the lowest string on an upright bass. It had such a deep, rich tone. I immediately fell in love. From there, I learned how to read music and taught myself piano, guitar, drums and the violin.

There have been times in my life where I have felt a lot of regret, shame and guilt over the things I have done in my past as well as things that have been done to me. These things affected me in such a way that I started to act out. I began using drugs and started cutting myself with razorblades. Because of this, I lost my music. I started getting locked up, sent to rehabilitation centers, and was arrested on a consistent basis.

Music in my eyes is the Universal Language. My double bass carried me not only physically to other places, but also through my trials and tribulations. Yet, at the same time it showed other people how I was feeling. That’s just something one musician can see in another.

The way one creates such a melodic, melancholy vibrato is beautiful to me. I believe my emotions flow straight through my fingertips onto the fingerboard and strings of my bass. Have you ever heard an instrumental duet? Notice how each instrument’s voice battle each other, loves each other or even cajole each other. I also believe musicians communicate through their instruments – a language of love and passion or anger and strife, a language of happiness and joy, or sadness and depression.

Loving music so much and then having it taken away from me has definitely taken a toll on my spirit; however, I also believe this test has made me stronger and merely love music even more. Music has always been there for me when nothing else had been there, aside from the love of my higher power. I believe with all my heart that God and music are the only things that really, truly make me happy. Music keeps me going no matter what and for that I thank God!

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***

I’ve hurt so bad in life.
All I knew before was the knife.
I now know better ways to cope,
When before I thought there was no hope.
The rape and the abuse,
The feeling of being so used.
I got through it all and now I can see,
God has something great in store for me.
I used to scream and cry,
Always asking, “God, why?”
But it wasn’t God’s doing, it was Hell on Earth,
Now I stand proud and say I fight on His turf.
I’m a soldier for God today,
And nothing will bring me down, nope, not this day.
I used to write sad rhymes,
Always thinking about the bad times.
But now I think about what’s good,
Instead of dwelling on life in the hood.
I was blind but now I see:
God has something great in store for me.

***

One of the hardest things for me to have done so far is to change the way I think. In that poem, I wrote about how I used to always dwell in the past. Basically, I never dealt with any of my feelings. Needless to say, my latest aphorism is: Deal, not dwell. In other words, I have to learn that my feelings are indeed valid and that it’s perfectly okay to feel them.

There’s a book out there called Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom. It’s about a man and his old sociology professor, Morrie, whom he goes to see when he gets sick with Lou Gherig’s disease, also known as ASL. The book is basically their last several meetings every Tuesday and speak on several different topics such as Death, Fear, Love, Marriage, and so on and so forth.

In Tuesdays With Morrie, Morrie talks about “detaching” from our feelings. I believe this can be summarized as this: Feel your feeling, envelop yourself in it, drown yourself in it, feel all the different aspects of it, and then just let it go. One of the aphorisms of AA is “Let Go And Let God.” I strongly believe that what must do with my feelings is feel them, get used to them, and then give it to God and don’t worry about it anymore.

I recently had a very personal surgical procedure and I was (for lack of better terms) scared shitless. This was less than a week ago. I found the surgery would take place about four or five days before it was to happen. That four or five day wait, I was an anxious, nervous, scared wreck. However, I felt my fear and did my best to give it to God. In AA, I was told several acronyms for ‘FEAR.’

Fuck Everything And Run
Face Everything And Recover

False Evidence Appearing Real

As the days went by, I decided I had to face my fears rather than running away from them. Finally, the day of my surgery arrived. Every time I sat in the hospital bed with my little gown on and got scared, I said a little prayer: “Okay God, I don’t want to feel afraid. Take it away from me. Amen” And it worked! I waited six hours until I could finally go into the surgery room and once they scooted me onto the surgery table, I said a prayer. The next thing I new I was waking up from my anesthetic sleep. Granted I was sore, the point is that they put me to sleep before I even had a chance to really feel afraid or anxious, which is indefinitely a blessing.

It just so happens that I’m actually a lot more blessed than I think I am. Go figure… He’s watching out for me.

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