Music is Life 2.0

When I wrote the first part, this was the message I had in my heart, but the universe decided to use me as a vessel to carry its own truth. Now I must speak my own truth and lay my thought at rest.

Here we go:

Music is Life 2.0

In the past recently, my life has been a roller coaster on fire. Adulting is kicking my behind. It has taken me to the ecstatic states of my imagination and has dragged me to the dark dangerous of my insecure soul.

During this up and down, I started noticing patterns, these patterns have led me to the Music analogy.

Music is composed of these 7 elements (bear with me I am not an expect):

• Rhythm
• Melody
• Harmony
• Timbre
• Form
• Texture
• Dynamics

Now, whenever we hear a song, it is multiple of these elements working beautifully together to give us the sound we appreciate so much and we call that Music. Anyone who has ever tried to pick up an instrument and play it, will agree with me, playing a song is not the easiest of tasks.

And don’t get me wrong, I am not comparing the difficulty to master playing an instrument part [as much as that is also relevant], I am more interested in the composure part. The part where Rhythm, Melody, Harmony, Timbre, Form, Texture and Dynamics come together to make a song.

Going along with the roller coaster path, I realised that my life is a song, made up of different elements such as; Home, School, Work, Friends, Weekend, Dreams, Family, etc. So I have noticed that the “song” was always playing beautifully when all these elements of my life were in order, and that they do not play in isolation, however they work as a team to influence one another.

When one of them is not in place or playing out of order, the blame game and pointing fingers doesn’t really help, because that one element which is out of tune messes up the whole song. So it is worth the while to stop and get it in order for you to play beautiful music again.

A very bad example would be a father. A father who has a horrible boss and hates his job because he is too qualified for it. The man in question cannot go home to be the most loving, supporting, playing with kids type of dad. Or the chance are slim. Chances are, he is grumpy at home and shouts at the kids for small accidents. And, drinks a lot during the weekend “just to blow off some steam”. And the week starts all over again.

Hence nowadays it is becoming more common that we hear phrases such as “Work-Life Balance”, because this shit is becoming serious.

We have become a people who fails to perform at work because we have problems at home, and a people who are hating their personal lives because our places of employment are making us so unhappy. The current stats for the rate of depressions and suicides confirms this, read the papers.

It’s a pity we’re not allowed to be depressed if we are Black. A concerned person asks me how am I? And how do I respond? “I am fine”. I once told a cousin of mine that I am depressed and his answer was [in Xhosa] “uphethwe ziz’gulo zabelungu”. Carelessly translated to “I am a weak man”.

When your song is playing out of tune, find someone, don’t be ashamed, play it to them. They will tell you which element or instrument to polish.

I have a friend I always play my songs to, sometime I feel sorry for them as my guitar keeps snapping and they have to bear that horrible sound. I am constantly fixing My Music one Note at a time…

On that note, the so called “strong people’s” lives are also Music, so don’t be selfish, now and then also sit down and bear the sound of them hammering the snare of their drums.

P.S

They say “it is not over till the fat lady sings”…My fat lady is tied up and gagged in an undisclosed location, this show is not ending any time soon…

#Mzukhology