some thoughts...

Meaningful Music

I’ve been in this business for as long as I can remember and through the years, I have developed my own musical formulas that are proven to invoke all kinds of emotions to a vast number of listeners. In a lot of ways, I have become an emotional techie to people who wish to listen to my music.

Lately though, so much have happened in my life and after being choked with too much emotions, the sounds that I hear in my heart seem to come to a bottleneck somewhere in the base of my throat, and without them getting into the mind, there is no way I could shift into the technical facets for them to be realized. Music that I hear inside me comes out in the form of tears and sleepless nights and overflowing ashtrays…

And then, after so many egotistical years of just concentrating on my own sound, I begin to hear other people’s music, and oh, sometimes I’ve never been so touched by such meaningful creations. The things I cannot say are getting yelled back into my ears like a blissful curse. How many times I’ve cried in my bed to Josh Groban’s “Broken Vow”, I don’t know. How many times I hum Manuel Francisco’s “Gabing Kulimlim”, I don’t know. Worse, I can hear them even when they are not there. Others are screaming at my face and there’s not even a whisper from my own lips for my own lips to say. The meaning that I want for myself simply cannot penetrate some kind of an unspoken emotional barrier somewhere. Maybe I subliminally refuse to exercise this freedom. Maybe I fear confrontation. Maybe I’m plain shy when it comes to my own true feelings.

This is not a matter of what many call “writer’s block” at all, as I still can write and cater to the requests of clients and bosses and peers. My only question is how come I can write music to complete the emotional needs of many and I cannot find meaning do it for myself? How come I can relate to others’ hearts and I cannot hear the beating of my own? There is something I am terribly longing for, but should it actually matter? Am I not supposed to be my own emotional techie too?

Nhick Ramiro Pacis
09.24.05