By Jim Koury, Editor/Publisher, Diversity Rules Magazine
© 2014 Diversity Rules Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
www.diversityrulesmagazine.com
When listening to music I am always attracted to that which is unique and original. When I hear a remake of a classic song, something inside of me just goes “ugh.” The redo isn’t usually as good and of course it has the current musician’s mark on it in terms of their style and the way they present the song.
My distaste for redone music may be due to my recollection of what the original sounded like. A younger set of ears may never have heard the original, and has the impression that what they are hearing is the original version. Whatever the case may be, musicians that continually produce unique music and original lyrics are much more prone to catch my ear. I would much rather listen to a song written from a blank piece of paper rather than a remade one based on someone else’s creative mark,
As a song, our lives begin with a blank sheet of paper upon which we write our music. What music we write and catches someone’s ear is up to us. As young children we tend to have amazing creative flair. Apart from the influence of our parents, children are more apt to explore unique ways of looking at their lives and are charting their own paths, creating their life’s music.
Somewhere along the line in our development and transition to young adults, we can tend to lose that creative flair and begin to shape our lives in terms of other people’s music and begin to bury our own inside us. We begin to borrow other music from people we know – peers, teachers, and others. Some of the life’s music we borrow can adversely impact our lives and take us down paths that we should not be on. Society also can begin to dictate the life’s music we adhere to, molding us artificially into beings who are in conflict with the inherent internal force, our soul, that resides inside us.
Our lives are comprised of choices. We can choose to be our own person and create our own music which will govern our existence in this current human manifestation. Conversely we can choose to borrow someone else’s music because it’s convenient or safer than embarking on a path less traveled.
In terms of my own experience, I think I have had a combination of both worlds. I am a Gemini after all and of course we are inherently creative but yet conflicted because there are two of us. My mom always used to tell me and still does to this day that I always marched to my own music and to the tune of a different drummer. I was my own being, my own person. I always clung to that because I was the only one I could rely on so I had to trust in myself and take comfort in that knowledge.
Growing up as a closeted gay male I was listening to so much conflicting music that I lost sight of that focus inward. The desire to “find myself” sort of got pushed to the back burner because I needed to begin to create a false world with whole genres of fake music that I came to rely on. All the while I was cultivating, unknown to me in my earlier days, an alternative set of music that more accurately reflected who I truly was.
During my lifetime these two sets of music crossed paths with each other many times, thus creating contradictions in what I was overtly expressing verbally and what I really believed inside. When these two alternative sets of music collide it’s like listening to two songs at once. We try to listen to both but we can’t. One always takes predominance.
As I had mentioned in a previous blog post a number of months back, my old college roommate and I were partying, getting high and just having a great time. He turns to me and says, “you know you are in your own private Idaho. I know you but I don’t.” I simply looked at him and laughed and said “what the fuck are you talking about.”
I knew exactly what he meant though. My music paths were in major collision during my 20’s and each, I believe were battling each other for pre-eminence. Unfortunately for many years, the false notes were in charge creating a “safe and sound” environment but the real me was always there waiting, planning its escape from its internal torment of not being able to come to the surface and begin to be the major influence in my life.
That point of self introspection comes voluntarily or involuntarily but rest assured that journey will occur. For many it’s too late to change course because their time in this life’s manifestation is drawing to a close or death is fast approaching. This is a place we need to avoid at all costs. We do not want to be held captive by our regrets at a point in our lives when we cannot change the outcome.
At some point in my life I began to not like the music I was playing. I was evolving and becoming someone much different than I was in my 20’s. My 30’s brought significant changes in my life culminating with my public outing at age 37. I had come to grips with myself much earlier but the time when we begin to know inside that we can no longer live a lie and listen to our two sets of music, trying to discern which to follow or which one is more convenient in a particular situation is a major turning point in one’s evolution to becoming the person they were born to be.
Naturally, the stronger set of life’s music will resist this transition to a repressed state and create havoc and conflict within ourselves. My battle created panic attacks and such a degree of insecurity that I had to seek out a psychologist to sort through things.
After a number of sessions, he finally said to me, “You know there is nothing wrong with you. You are just adjusting to a new way of looking at yourself.” That is when I began to embrace who I truly was and I created situations in my life in which I would confront my fear of expressing outwardly the essence of my soul; the life force residing inside of me that had been waiting patiently for me to begin to look inward to put into motion the process of releasing the greatness that is designed and wired inside all of us from the day we are born.
Today I look back and I simply do not recognize the person I was in my 20’s and 30’s. As Gotye says in their song I was “somebody that I used to know.” Luckily, for whatever reasons, many of which I am intimately aware of now, I have opened myself up to myself. I have exposed the darkest corners of my soul and I have embraced them all as part of the unique person that is me. Because of this internal examination I can never go back to the person I used to know. It simply is not possible, as the power that one unleashes inside themselves is overpowering of a anything we can do to try to repress it.
I encourage you to look at the music that is currently guiding you. Is it the music that represents who you truly are or is it the old music of you that you brought along with you all your life because it was safe and comfortable? Discover the key, the spark which will jettison you to begin your process of finding you. Make a decision to burn the old music to the ground and ignite the genesis of new life that will foster a person that will not recognize the person you were before.