A few days ago I heard a story of a woman who wrote songs and aspired to be a songwriter in her early years, but when those dreams didn’t materialise, ended up walking away from music and didn’t write songs for 40 years. Her story made me incredibly sad, especially after hearing a song she’d written all those years ago and being moved by how beautiful it was. It got me thinking about how much more music from her the world never got to hear because she gave it up for so long. Then that got me thinking about how much music, stories, paintings, and art have gone uncreated and don’t exist in the world because of people who have given up on their dreams of creating, or never followed their passions to begin with.
On reflection, what made the woman’s story hit home for me is I can relate to it. I’ve probably shared bits and pieces of this in previous essays on this blog, but basically I took music lessons as a child, and by my mid teens, in the final year of secondary school, I found myself deeply enamoured with the keyboard and bass guitar. Then I went to university, and I had this notion that I couldn’t combine my musical interests with my workload and academic pursuits. I believed someone like me wasn’t supposed to make music, and artistic pursuits were a waste of valuable time I didn’t have. Where these beliefs came from, I couldn’t tell you, but there was no doubt in my mind that it was the right thing to do, so I dropped music completely, and barely touched a guitar or keyboard for years, even during the holidays.
I found music again years later, shortly after I started my PhD. It was something I decided to take up again on a whim, because I’d attended a seminar on coping with the stress of PhD research, and one of the most popular bits of advice was to take up a hobby like playing a musical instrument or knitting. It didn’t take long for me to realise it was more than a hobby for me, it was something I wanted, no, needed to take seriously, something I’d sorely missed in the nearly 10 years I’d given it up. In the years since, I’ve followed the creative journey where it’s taken me, and it’s brought me here, to a place where I write essays, stories, and music, and perform that music in front of live audiences.
This is where we are now. When I find myself thinking about all that lost time, the nearly 10 years I “wasted” not engaging in creative pursuits – and I do think about it a lot – I remind myself that it’s all in the past. I can’t change the past or do anything about the lost time, but I can reclaim the present, and I like to think I’ve been doing just that, having been on this creative journey for a few years now.
But enough about me. For all the sadness I felt when I first heard the woman’s story, it brings me great joy to say her story is not over. I’d even go so far as to say there’s a happy ending on the horizon. The reason I heard about this story at all is because her son, who knew his mum once harboured dreams of being a songwriter, and yet had never heard her music because she never talked about that part of her life, was on a mission to uncover that long lost facet of his mum’s life. He worked with some folks to track down the 40 year old recordings of her music, restore and digitise them, and then have the music performed by a musician to a live audience, while his mum watched on via a remote livestream. Turns out that was just what she needed, because having heard her music performed live, she was inspired to go out and buy a keyboard so she could start writing music again. Sure, she’d had a 40-year hiatus, and there’s nothing to be done about that, but the thing about happy endings, as the old Orson Welles quote goes, is that it “depends, of course, on where you stop your story.”
I like to think her story’s not over. It didn’t end with her never taking up music again. It brings me joy to know that somewhere in the world, a woman approaching the golden years of her life has had a rekindling and a fire reignited in her, and she’s going to bring beautiful music into the world. Because, it’s never too late.
P.S.: My debut non-fiction book, Art Is The Way, and my middle-grade novella, A Hollade Christmas, are out everywhere now. You can get them in all good bookstores and from all major online vendors.