The power of making music

When I am in my most stressful moments, snippets of lyrics I've sang in the past generally save me. 

I don't share all of music with the world, because I don't have the time to perfect it. I do it for me, because I need something to save me at times of severe stress.

I'm in times of severe stress frequently. My beard is going grayer much sooner than I thought it would. Every single day brings with it some crisis that has to be solved.

And they're almost always solved. 

Since 2009, I've made at least fifty hours of songs, all improvised as I play my guitar and try to let myself go as much I can. I become this weird version of myself when I sing, and I love being able to have the luxury to spend some of my humanity to capture this stranger who lives inside of me.

That stranger saves me all the time.

I can't explain it, but I want to. I'm one human being among way over seven billion now. So many people, so many potential points of view. 

I want people to be able to shut out criticism in order to create something that is helpful to them. I create things to understand me better. I have renewed this blog in order to try to understand me better. 

I improvise everything when I sing. I am incapable of writing songs. I need to live through the things I created, which is probably a reason I don't share them with many people. I don't want my lived experience to be taken away from me. 

That's the power of making music for yourself, as opposed to just consuming others. That's crucial, yes, to study others and to know forms and the like. I don't know. My song self doesn't think about any of that, to be honest. My song self is just me in a crystallized moment. 

When I hear bits of those fifty hours, I'm energized. I think I am me in this moment and all of the other moments. I hear a voice is alive, that is fallible, that is human, a human is connected to is own humanity. 

But can I let anyone ever hear it? If I think about that, I immediately say no. I don't want to take away from what it means to me. Is this selfish? Self-protective? The right idea? 

I don't know, but I'll finish this post with a video of a song that also goes through my head. Novelty by Joy Division, whose lead singer killed himself in 1980. The words in this song shout out to me from the time when he was alive and they resonate with me. He lives on. When you hear this, just think of me as a person who is only as good as the last story he wrote.

So they say. One day courage will come.