song in question: march2.mp3
i hung out with two music making friends a while ago and watched them make music. it was so cool and seemed like such a fun thing to do so the next day energized i tried myself but it just sounded so ugly and so far away from what was in my head that it was discouraging and i gave up.
but recently i've been spending a lot of time scrolling through spotify totally dissatisfied with my library, desperately trying to find someone new who will speak the fresh contents of my heart back to me. i needed a professional emotion-articulator to speak for me, because i am unskilled in the ways articulating emotions beyond words.
of course this is ridiculous. but thankfully this dissatisfied jumping from song to song led me to pick up my guitar and just started to play to see what would happen. i started with a simple one string melody, one note a at a time, i recorded over myself to drown them out, made tons of mistakes, doused it all in reverb to drown them out, cut stuff out if it was too bad, avoided any action that seemed tedious or boring, and recorded over myself again and again, without any thought or planning. after an hour i could sit back and listen and see oh that's how i'm feeling and my heart felt good and cleansed. all the roughness and mistakes were part of it too, i saw myself as i was then, anxious and imperfect, and could dialogue with myself through this medium of guitar, rather then pray chance lets me stumble upon the song i needed at that point, if it exists. every unique self with its unique situation has their own song to be sung, not for a crowd, but just to reveal you to yourself and friends who care.
this last point took me way too long to figure out. you can just make small bits of art and send them back and forth with people that are close to you! it takes like five minutes to listen or see something and it has the five times the depth of a text. i don't know why i didn't realize this obvious fact of life sooner.
art should be taught in schools as a matter of health (waldorf schools do this), so no one must stay emotionally stuck waiting for the right song to move them. to be able to harmonize your emotions yourself is a necessity of life (see The National Value of Art).
goethe would write a letter to a friend and casually move into a spontaneous and beautiful poem. if one person understands is that not enough?