Thoughts

She asked me last night if I still listened to classical with the same fervor that I used to. In truth, I hesitated and said no. It had, in fact, been so long since I had scrolled my iPod's clicker to that category--so long, when once a composer was all in the world I wished to be--to develop my family's talent for music through the page. My mother was gifted with the voice; I was gifted with the ear. And how I have wasted it.

And tonight, scrambling down the tenebrous streets of the city, I clicked away from the ephemeral guitars and drums that have been my fare for so long, clicked again and found my old love. There is something about classical music that suits the solitary: immerse yourself in it, feel it, and it becomes something like communion with the divine. Perhaps it is the lack of words that produces this feeling: words and voices remind the soul of other people, and while you listen to music with these elements, it is in general other people that you notice and turn your thoughts towards. Perhaps this is why so many songs are about love. But as I walked down among the shadows of 56^th Street to the hushed strings of Corelli, I noticed things that have largely slipped my notice: the leaves as they squeeze out from the buds after their long slumber, the rabbits and raccoons that oddly make their home in this most urban of places, and the faint glimmer of the stars that wrestle with the glare of the city for attention. For the first time in so long, the people faded, and nature was again revealed.

Where have I been? What have I been doing for, what has this been, three years? Is this why I've slacked in my studies? Is this why I've abandoned the pen and sought comfort instead in the shallow affections of other people? A simple neglect of the music that has always stirred me the most? Rediscovering it is almost akin to hearing a mother's voice and recognizing it after she has long been lost.

Spring has begun. I feel it now; it is not merely enough to see it. I wish to become who I once was again. To struggle with the stars, to drink in the beauty of life, and to strive for what lies beyond the horizon. Let this be my spring. And may there never be another winter.

It has been so long since I have felt alive.