Make your own world

Somebody said I was too old. Hell, my teacher all but insinuated I was. Keep trying, she said. I have another student, he's in his fifties, and he couldn't get it and couldn't get it and for weeks we just practiced changing from one chord to the next and he finally got it, so keep practicing. Hell, I was so inspired by that little speech I could have just shit.

Some people, I think, thought I was too stupid. Or didn't have talent. (Hell, maybe they're right on that last point, but that doesn't stop a lot of other people.)

I swear there were one or two who thought it would be a crime against society for me to sing.

But none of that is going to stop me. I wish I could actually build a world made of music, that world where I go. You wouldn't breathe air, you'd actually breath the music. Music would be as real as the wind. And you wouldn't breathe through your nose, you'd breathe through your whole skin, all over your body, like the way it just washes over your entire body. And the air? You'd take that in through your fingers. Sharp intakes that sometimes burned and sometimes just caressed your fingertips. You'd smell with your ears, and see with your stomach, with that deep, visceral feeling that gives you more information that just visual.

The point of all this is just do what you want, no matter what anyone tells you. No matter what society tells you. Because anything you try or want to do passionately there will be a line of people telling you why you can't or shouldn't do it. Just listen to that voice inside you. If you think it's right, it's right. And no matter how you're treated, no matter how many times people put you down or treat you like a piece of trash, just keep putting one foot in front of the other, just keep trying to move those fingers. And don't go near those people who are destructive to what you want to do. Even if it means chucking the whole lot, and paring everything down to just one or two people. Because one good person is worth more than a hundred destructive ones.

Because there's a damn good reason why God made you the way you are, and not a chair. And sometimes you don't even know the reason.