Dear Music

Dear Music,

I am writing this with a heavy heart. No, this time please do not blame me. But you did it again. You made me weep at 3 AM. Who does that? It really hurts me to say but you have not heard from me for the longest time. The other day, when I was returning home the only sound, I could hear apart from my heartbeat was of you. You who made me realize that it is okay to be alone at times and let the world sink in. You who made me realize that it’s okay to dance without music and it’s okay to sing like a toad gone mad. It took me long, but I realized that therapy does not always need a person. You know for people like us, you are just an emotion. Something that is better unsaid. I am sorry but I know I have made you run on loops for hours, months and even years. You have at times poured all your heart into mine and touched this lonely soul in parts that needed a craving for so long. You who have hugged me when I was desperate for love, you had healed me in places I didn’t even know I was broken at. You have done to me what Enrique had done to music. What Gerry did to Holly and what Coldplay songs do to lyrics? Tell me one thing: how do you manage to know me so well? Like you know exactly what I feel and still not make me feel guilty about it?

Our bond is different and we both know it. On my 10th birthday, Baba gifted me a Sony Walkman with an empty music library that I really didn’t know what to do with. Baba always told me that music is therapy but music to me was like an escape from the chaotic world. Music came to my rescue when solo trips, haircuts and therapy sessions could not do anything. There are always times when we are falling short of words to express how we feel no matter who it is – friends or family. Therefore we need music – to express and not to impress. There are no second thoughts when it comes to listening to music to comfort your soul. Just play a soothing tune and let it consume you till you start feeling better.

You know the weird thing about you? You can both kill and heal a person. I will tell you how. The song I heard on the radio today had brought back so many memories and made me realize that certain things do not change at all. You can just move on in life but still feel the emptiness in your soul when you hear a particular song. After I broke off, my best friend kept telling me not to hear romantic songs, but I did, and it took me back to times when I actually longed for a hug but as I said instead of hugging a person I hugged you. I hugged music.  Ever since then you have become like my favourite couch, you are and will always be there in my hard days. There is so much range like the music we hear when we are dancing in the shower, or the music we hear when we are in love and then comes the music, we ‘skip’. So, here comes the weird part when every time someone left me and took a piece of me; I could feel that they haunt me with a piece of music. Songs that I had not deleted from my playlist. Songs that were not played in loop but songs that would make me stay awake at night. The power of music is such that it can make you feel things you didn’t even know you had inside of you. A certain chord can make your eyes brim with tears reminding you of someone that might have happened in the past or it could make you laugh and grin at the possibilities of what the music can inspire you to do in the coming future. It makes your grey cells work in ways without directly talking to you and that is magical. You never know what idea can strike you with the right choice of music. Lately, when you come up, I politely change the song. I cannot deny the fact that I miss you but it’s just that I am not too strong to handle you. But after few years, when I am sitting at a café and sipping my favourite coffee and you are played in the background, I guess I would just smile and this time I won’t ask anyone to change the song because like an old friend you would come back to me in new ways and new memories that may be, I would cherish and not let go.

Written by Poonam Chatterjee

I am the 27 -year-old budding author, pet lover, and foodie. From a tender age of ten, I found my calling in the written word and since then, has been scribbling away my unconventional ideas, sometimes in the last pages of notebooks and sometimes on online blogs. Writing gives me happiness like no other thing.

Week 4, January 2021