What is a man without water to drink? Simple, he will be what I am without music- dead.
I had always been told that life gives you loads of doors to open. But what no one told me was how I could open them. I soon realised why this was an untold mystery because the answer is different for everyone. For me, the key to each door was music. You don’t just need a key to open doors. You also need courage. Amazingly enough, music played both those roles for me; mainly, heavy metal music. Now the reason heavy metal music resonates with me is that the whole process of composing it and executing it successfully needs you to feel a certain amount of pain. However, you need to overcome this ‘pain’…and by pain I don’t mean the pain you feel when the protagonist of a TV series dies, or the pain when you realise that your crush is an absolute jerk. I am not even referring to the pain you feel when you lose a friend or a pet. I am talking about the pain you feel when you lose yourself.
Losing yourself in the endless black world, not of physics equations, but of expectations. The second form of pain that I am referring to is the pain you go through when someone breaks your trust. Someone you loved. Someone you thought would give you all the support you need, a someone that most others have. Funnily enough, none of the heavy metal artists had this someone in their life. It’s only when you have a void in life that you can find something to fill it up with. And on realising that, I, in a very movie-like manner, picked up the guitar and became someone else. I transformed into someone with more self-confidence, someone with a higher capacity to tolerate criticism and someone who had a much easier time letting go of things that hold you back.
My guitar was and is my best friend. One may ask what it has done for me. Well, it makes me feel worth something. And trust me, that is the best thing, and the only thing something/someone needs to do for you, for you to be eternally grateful to them.
As mentioned previously, my guitar boosted my confidence. I evolved from being an antisocial ‘nerd’ into an approachable and enthusiastic person. This made it much easier for me to grab opportunities and taking these opportunities only gave me more experience. Apart from this, my skills as a guitarist and a performer developed. Cut to today, I have no fear of performing in front of others.
It is pretty obvious to you by now that my guitar has made me who I am today. That is why my guitar isn’t just a part of me. My guitar is what others see when they look at me and what others hear when I talk to them. It’s like an ID card for Scottish students. It is a necessity for me to be accepted. Lastly, since this article is going up as anonymous, you might not even know, but you may have already spoken to a living guitar.
-Anonymous