Thursday, March 19th, 2009
I wrote an essay for English last month, and I really enjoyed writing it. I thought I would share it with my viewers as well as do some tweaking of it. I made a Four, which is the highest grade an essay can get. I think the prompt was “Write about the importance of doing something you love.” Of course, my topic was music. Here it is:
“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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Tags: classical, contrabass, double bass, english, essay, guitar, kontrabass, language, love, Music, musician, piano, regret, rehab, shame, string bass, upright bass, viola de gamba
March 30th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
Isn’t it going to be exciting to see how music speaks to you now that you are in recovery? I can’t wait to hear how you grow with your music. You are so talented! Who knows…perhaps you will become the next young prodigy and/or stellar composer…hmmmmmm.