A Life with Music

Satchmi Vinyl Day 2015

Last Saturday, I attended Satchmi Vinyl Day. It was a music festival hosted by Satchmi, a music and lifestyle brand that centers on selling vinyls and turntables. Here, a bunch of local bands and artists played some great music afternoon to midnight; it was a one hell of an event.

And when I say great music, I mean pretty freaking awesome music.

For a while now I had been feeling the routine of my life weighing down on me. When you’re a college student, life tends to become a bit bland sometimes. Waking up, doing schoolwork, eating, going home, sleeping, etc. It’s all just one big routine that seems to be going in a straight line. And so as summer approached, the excitement to get out of the routine of school was exciting, but also kind of dreadful because I knew I was about to fall into the routine of summer, and past experiences have told me already that would also be a bit of a straight line. I wasn’t wrong.

Don’t get me wrong I’ve entitled myself to trying out some new stuff: photography, improving my Photoshop skills, reading a bunch of books (a lot of books), and essentially going out with my friends. But these things don’t always happen and so the straight routine of life once again takes over.

But every now and then a little spark will light up in me, and it will come at the sound of music. Yes, music never fails to disturb the straight line frequency of life. It’ll come to my ears in harmonic words, shining over the noise of the background. It doesn’t put you in some bubble away from life, no, it breaks the stagnant wavelength at which life travels, every part of your body is dancing, your heart has learned to beat in another rhythm and you will happily let it.

Music has always been that way for me; I grew up surrounded by it, more than anything else. It just runs in my blood and so my veins recognize it when I have filled my body with tunes. It’s as if I had given my body a second heart, a second mind, a second soul. With music, I find that wonder we lose sometimes. We light up at the sound of a good song, it is inherent, it something we cannot help.

And that’s exactly what happened last Saturday after listening to these local bands perform. I heard so many great songs, my veins were circulating blood faster, my entire body demanded to soak in every second of it. I felt alive. I spent a whole night breaking the stagnancy of the routine of my life.

So thank you Satchmi for a night of music. Thank you to the bands that performed.

And well, thank you music. You’ve done it again.

On heartbreak and loving deeply

The first thing I think about when I hear the word heartbreak is: pain

There is pain in heartbreak, or at least that’s what they tell you. They call it heartbreak because it feels as if your heart has been shattered. Because people relate breaking to pain. There is a change in the continuity of something. A gap. We tend to feel heartbreak when there is loss. It is the pain of losing something, that we feel. It is the process of mourning that we go through.

But I don’t believe that heartbreak happens when there is loss, I believe it happens when there is love.

Rather, I believe that heartbreak happens at the point that someone is loved deeply. So deeply that it pierces through and creates the cracks and holes that signify a broken heart. See a broken heart can mean that there is pain and loss of love, but furthermore it is a proof of even being loved, and loved deeply, in the first place. It is love that creates the cracks our hearts possess, not the loss of it. The very fact that there are people present in our heart tells us that they have broken in.

A broken heart is a testament of how much we have been loved, not how much we’ve been hurt.

But then raises the question, what is it then that makes us feel pain if our hearts have already been broken? It is the loss. It is the unfairness that exists when someone’s presence leaves your heart, yet knowing that the very cracks they created will never leave. It is reminder that there will always be a gaping hole where they entered willingly, and left. When someone is loved deeply, there is a door left open. The joy in a person’s choice to stay is just as powerful as the pain in someone’s decision to leave. The pain is in carrying the memory of both forever, present in the cracks that they left.

But I tell you, be proud of those scars. They are symbols of being loved deeply, of having presence in your heart, of people that have fought to get into the thing that you hold most sacred to you. And if you want to, then be boastful about it because those are testaments of people that have made the effort to love you.

See Yourself Through a Different Set of Eyes

A very nice prompt to look into indeed. Thank you for this! Personally, I am not always sure of what people make of the visible expressions and actions that I show. During the times that I am not with my friends, I actually tend to be self-conscious of the people surrounding me at school. Often times I find myself trying not to look too slouched, making sure my face is devoid of emotion because I worry that I show too much (especially the smiles of amusement), and trying my best to look a little more presentable. I always have my earplugs on, I never meet anyone’s eyes and I am essentially looking down most of the time. I can imagine it probably looks weird when I walk because sometimes I catch myself dragging my body. If I’m going to think about what people’s back stories might be for me, it would probably range from shallow little details to deeply analyzed ones. People could say “wow that kid just looks grumpy/sad/overly serious. He must be having a hell of a day. Maybe he failed a test or he lacks sleep because let’s face it, this is college”. Or they could say “that kid is like a ghost, sort of just floating through these halls, nearly always alone. His eyes are searching, but for what? Maybe somewhere to belong”. Whatever they might be, it would be interesting to find out. And truth is, these things are true sometimes, but most days its just me giving off my neutral vibe. Something that can be misconstrued for loneliness, sadness, or even anger. I promise though I am a pretty happy person as well. I’ve always prided myself however for taking the time to be self-aware. I like to reflect on who I am as a person and what I do and the circumstances I face. It helps me calm myself and it helps me evaluate myself, to find out whether or not I like the person that I am. Because I believe that forming our personality and character is a never-ending process, something that we must constantly re-evaluate. So this wouldn’t be the first time I asked myself “Who am I to everybody else?”, because it is an important step to the question “Who am I?”

The Daily Post

As bloggers, we’re constantly defining ourselves to our readers. Through our photos, our stories, our poetry, our recipes, or our podcasts, we tell the world who we are. Even those of us who share a great deal of our personal lives still only give snippets of ourselves. We create a public persona (even our choices of blog themes reflect the way we want to represent ourselves online). We choose what we want to share of ourselves, and our readers fill in the rest according to their own points of view. Every reader might have a slightly different idea of who you truly are.

I’ve been thinking about how this applies to my daily life. I have an unconscious habit of creating stories about people I see, but whom I only know in “snippets.” The barista at my local coffee shop, the surly bus driver who never smiles at me no…

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