Creative Passion is My Thing...

I guess I want to start with a moment, a moment I had recently, actually just ten minutes before I started manically typing on my computer. I was standing outside, on my porch, looking up at the stars. The “currently playing” on my music playlist on my phone was a song called “God Only Knows” by The Beach Boys. (I was listening to the album Pet Sounds, which, by the way, is one of the greatest albums ever made, definitely in my top 10). I was kind of just fumbling about on the porch in this clumsy way, kind of swaying along to the music, looking up at the stars, sharing this moment alone with myself, and I began to wonder.

I began to wonder about a lot of things. About life, about memories, about sharing memories. Sometimes a small little moment like that, is like a little teeny tiny photograph, a miniscule picture, a very short look at a person’s life. A tiny moment that has so much meaning, even if it is just me standing on my porch at night listening to The Beach Boys and clumsily dancing around and around looking like a fool. It’s not one of the best moments of my life, and it’s not the worst either. It is just me, and I think it describes a lot about me. I feel so much. I feel the passion, the hope, the loss, the desperation, the loneliness.

I feel everything all at once. I breathe in the notes and the beats and the music and it overpowers me sometimes. That’s why a lot of times I’m pretty sure people get tired of me posting about music on social media all the time. Sometimes I just have to tell myself “Anne Marie, not everyone is as passionate as you are, and not everyone is going to understand it like you.” And that’s a fair statement to make; no one can quite experience your own life like you, after all. But sometimes I wonder. I wonder if people say to themselves: “Why does she always talk about music? What’s the big deal?” Well, this would be my response to them:

Music is a big part of my life; it feeds my soul, it provides comfort and happiness. It is such a beautiful thing in this torn apart world. When everything else might seem like it’s falling apart, I know that I can go into my office, put on a record, and drown out everything else. I can play my drums, or my keyboard; I can sing my blues away.

Art, writing, and music have always been my biggest passions. I think self expression is one of the most intimate and beautiful things on this Earth. The way that we can communicate so much with words, notes, and images; the way that hearing a song, or reading a sentence, or looking at a painting is like looking deep inside the artist’s soul. That is the beauty of it.

The trouble of it is sometimes you feel lonely, isolated from everyone else; sometimes you are a tree falling in the forest, and nobody's there to witness it; so no one hears. That can be painful. It can hurt so much when you are alone in your self-expression, and that is oftentimes what kills me over and over again. I can remember when I was in college, I did a lot of art, and I was still learning, so it wasn't great. Some people in the class loved it and appreciated it, but a lot of people laughed at me, made me feel insignificant, tore me down because my lines weren't perfect and neat.

I remember one night in particular, lining up all of the work that I had spent hours doing. Standing in the room and just staring at it all, looking in amazement at what I had done. But then I felt sad. I felt sad and lonely because I had no one to share this moment with. I was completely alone, and no one would ever see these works, instead, they would disappear into an old box and collect dust in an attic for several years to come. I still haven’t even looked at them again. I’m almost afraid to.

The point is, that is what kills me with everything I do. But even through all of that, I still have hope. I still always just keep doing what I’m doing, with as much passion as possible, with everything I’ve got, because I need to hold onto it. I need to hold onto the art, the music, the passion, the place that I get when I am so creative and I feel like I see things so clearly; that I feel God or something spiritual in it. I don’t want to offend anyone with what I’m saying, but that’s the way I feel. I always have.

I feel like music has been a big part of my life not because it means so much to me, but because I feel I could probably plot out the exact year I discovered certain bands, I could tell you how I was feeling when I listened to endless amounts of music in my bedroom on the second floor of my parents’ house in the suburbs.

I could tell you what was on my mind the moment I first heard the album Kid A by Radiohead after my brother suggested I buy it at the Plan 9 record store. I could tell you how when my dog died a few years back, I felt like listening to the album By The Way by the Red Hot Chili Peppers for no apparent reason, and about how I drove up and down Anderson Highway for 20 minutes listening to that CD, and how when the song “Dosed” came on I just started crying my eyes out. I could tell you how these moments with music seem somewhat meaningless, but also seem very important in my life, and actually are very important, for various reasons. How these things really shaped me and made me the person I am today.

In a nutshell, it was hopeless.

She was bleeding so much inside.

Filled with passion, she almost exploded.

The ideas never left her brain.

The room wouldn’t stop spinning around.

She could almost dream wonderful things.

The world stopped her; she ran.