i'm gradually feeling more myself
today i sat down and played guitar for a good part of the afternoon. it was around 3:00 pm, i made a cup of coffee and sat down with my acoustic guitar and my notebook of songs that i always think of as new songs, but are actually fairly old now. most of them are songs i wrote in 2018, and playing them today honestly just felt like rediscovering a part of myself i'd forgotten about. its not even like i haven't been playing guitar, or anything. i have. i have practiced many different styles lately, gotten really good at my fingerstyle and composition, and my ability to experiment. i just kind of left these songs in my past, for some reason. playing them again made me realize that i was playing them how i heard them in my head all those years ago, and it got the gears turning again. at first, i had to try and remember what i played, how they sounded, and then it just came back to me. before i knew it i was going through them for a third, then a 4th time, and it felt good.
i took a break for dinner, put on hail to the thief, by radiohead, and those feelings all came back. i didn't feel like i was constantly censoring myself, curating every last thought and move that i made. i just felt like me.
i would hear the music, the energy of it, and remember my own music i was just playing, and as the album was playing see and hear myself performing, with some unknown band, in some nondescript location. this used to happen every time i listened to music, i could just close my eyes and see myself playing music, and it felt so good. it felt like i knew what i was supposed to do with my life.
then fear, stage fright, anxiety, whatever you want to call it took hold of me. i began thinking too hard about what other people thought, and what would sound good, what would look good, and it took me out of the music and into my head. i blame social media for that. in the early days, i would use instagram as a networking tool, sharing what i was up to, connecting with others, but somewhere around 2019-2020, it became all consuming. the algorithms got better, they began warping my mind, and i started feeling less myself. i know i talk about how good getting off mainstream social media was for me a lot, but tonight was a moment when i really felt myself again, and it was because i was present with myself. i was singing songs i wrote many years ago, songs that i told myself were no good because i didn't think they'd perform well on social media, i was listening to an album i used to listen to on repeat, almost every day. the case is still very beat, and falls apart upon opening, from being carried in my bag all those years. there's some coffee staining on the edge of the lyrics from being open while i listened many times.
i guess this post is a reminder to stay true to myself, those songs i wrote and never shared all those years ago are worth sharing, and i should play them and maybe, just maybe, i'll attract the right people who will want to help me shape their sound.