Storytelling Through Poetry - Life After Music School

     I have finally gotten to the point where my poems have been individually edited enough to where I can start placing them in the story order that will be most impactful for myself and (hopefully) the reader. But during my last meeting with my editor Micaela, she mentioned something that I feel I'm ready to share.

Part of the editing process for us is going poem by poem and identifying key emotional poems that could be pivotal depending on where they are placed in the collection. This was when Micaela mentioned that despite my undergrad being in music, there is a infinitesimal amount of poems that mention music, let alone my being a musician.

    That's because I burned out.

Since I could remember, music was in my life either through church gospel groups, piano lessons, playing violin, school choirs, musicals, voice lessons, and ultimately making the decision to pursue music in college. I loved it, and I eventually made it who I was to the point that if I wasn't recognized for it, it crushed me. Thinking back I'm going 'how ridiculous,' but I truly didn't think my involvement in music or singing was worth anything if people didn't know I did it; I was in it for all the wrong reasons. (grew to think..)

I wish I could pinpoint when exactly I musically crashed, but it was somewhere between my senior recital performance, and the week before I graduated early (I changed my degree from Music Ed to just Music a week before the graduation deadline and conferred a semester earlier, burn out anyone?). Within those 6 weeks, surprisingly, is when I started writing poetry. At first it was for the writing course I was in, but eventually the words started pouring out of my mouth with a ferocity that I couldn't contain, and I had written my first fifty poems before graduation.

After a few years of trying to stay involved musically (countless gigs, two musical theatre attempts, and a swift return/departure of teaching music), I stopped. 

I stopped singing and dancing in my apartment. I stopped re-teaching myself piano. I stopped listening to music on my phone or in the car. I began to sit in silence and let me tell you what, at first I hated it. When you are so used to constant noise and distraction, your innermost thoughts can feel overwhelming, and they certainly did for me. But after a few months of my music hiatus, I could feel my head clear, slowly but surely, and the words started to flow again; this time, with more meaning.

I didn't start listening to music again until almost a year later, and when I did I could feel that part of me come back alive; the girl before music school who loved music just for herself. Now, I enjoy both sitting in comfortable silence, and blasting my newest obsession album, equally. It's new, and it's different, but it allows me the necessary space to write when I need, and sing out loud for no one but myself.

I'm glad that I studied music, truly I am. I know I wouldn't have learned and grown the way I needed to without it, and ultimately it's what led me to poetry, for which I'm eternally grateful. Which brings us back to ordering my poems :)

The bulk of my poems are emotional anchors, and they are a way for me to reflect on who I was, who I am, and who I want to be. Ultimately, the collection will be read as a semi-chronological story that leads to who I've become, and while music was a large part of that story for a very long time, it's not the only part of who I am, and that's the part I want to focus on in this book.

I know one day I'll jump back in and start playing Debussy's piano sonatas and take up voice lessons again, and I do sincerely miss that part of me that would sing and dance around my apartment in unbridled bliss at ungodly hours of the night (apologies to my neighbors...) but right now I am enjoying pursuing other passions: writing stories, creating art, and living with (sometimes) silent wonder.

Until next time,

Sewit