Assignment for my creative writing class, see this post for context!
Day 4, 9/26/19 Daily writing prompt: “Obsessions” Assignment: "Your main obsessions have power; they are what you will come back to in your writing over and over again." - Natalie Goldberg In my experience, writers tend to manifest an obsessive quality more than people who don't write. As Goldberg says, obsessions feed writing. And writing might be a way that unusually obsessive people find to channel their obsessions into something useful and concrete. Free write about an obsession or compulsion of your own. Something you feel (or felt) you MUST do, where logic and reason didn't really play into it. Be funny like David Sedaris if you want, or treat it seriously. Take whatever tone comes naturally when writing about this obsession of yours. It can be one that you've gotten over, or one that is persistent. Or you can make something up, attribute an obsession to a fictional character, if you prefer.
Ever since I was a little girl, I have been obsessed with music. Listening to it, talking about it, playing it. The story goes that when I was two and a half years old, my parents took me to a record store. My eyes went wide when I heard the music of Michael Jackson playing over the house speakers, and I planted myself next to his cardboard replica, refusing to leave the store until my parents bought his BAD album on cassette for me. It was my very first album. Timeline-wise, this story lines up – I was born in 1985 and MJ’s BAD was released in 1987.
I began piano lessons when I was four years old. Another of my earliest memories is of being dropped off at a strange lady’s house for my first lesson, sitting on the piano bench with my little legs swinging far off the ground, staring down at the keys while she pointed out “Middle C” to me.
My mom told me that I used to lay in the grass of my backyard, and sing at the sky for hours.
As an adult, this obsession with music has continued. This passion sometimes impedes on my day to day life. Case in point, if I am trying to have a conversation with someone at a restaurant or bar that is playing music, I have to fight to concentrate on the speaker and the discussion at hand. It sometimes feels as if I must force my brain to focus on the topic of discourse, rather than on the background music. My mind naturally wants to focus on the music filtering through the venue – to identify the song, the instrumentation, the artist. My thoughts naturally want to follow the thread of notes that are winding their way into my eardrum, and get lost in the melodies and the organic thought processes that accompany them in my mind.
Oftentimes, it feels like music is the only place where I can leave my anxiety behind. Playing my instruments and making music with others is one of the only ways I can achieve a “flow state.” I become fully immersed in music and bask in the enjoyment of being fully present in the harmonies we are creating together, rather than ruminating on worries for the future or regrets about the past.