Power of Words
I always enjoyed writing. As a child, I guess I would write stories, not that I can find evidence of them. Maybe my mother has them locked up with other remnants of my childhood.
One of the challenges for me has been hearing my words read out loud. So much so that I made it a task on my life list of things to do – read a poem I wrote out loud. Some of it I suppose stems from an incident in 2nd form, when I wrote what was an extremely emotional piece for me (a search through a forest for a specific tree representing my friend who died over the summer). After reading it out loud in class, my teacher, who I had liked just fine up until that point, dismissed it saying the metaphor was too cliched. I said nothing and sat down. But that was it for me. I refused to read my stuff out loud after that.
The truth is for a long time, anything I wrote remained very private. Then I started blogging and found that knowing that people were reading my words encouraged me to write even more.
One night I had the unique experience of hearing words that came from my head not just read out loud but put to music and sung. I sat in a studio as music was created around my words, and they came alive, bringing with them emotion to people other than me.
Words are truly a big part of who I am. I love to read them, write them, speak them. They are so powerful and can capture so much emotion and meaning, both good and bad, kind and hurtful. That night I got to see my words move through music and I was moved. To what? I am not sure.
Personal Freedom
I realized something about my relationship with my writing. Looking back at things I have written, there are a few types of things I write. There are those that are deeply personal and pretty private, which are really written for me. There are those that are not so private but are just my own ramblings to myself. And last, there are the things I write to an invisible audience.
In all cases, nowadays, I find myself pressing that “Publish” button and sending those thoughts out into this mysterious void. Even those intended for an audience of sorts, I have no idea whether they will be read. Unless you comment I don’t know who exactly has read something I wrote or what they think about it.
What I did realize is that, the things I write for myself are placed here with everything else because I find it strangely liberating to send my thoughts out to fly on their own. Tossing them out of the nest, so to speak, gives me a feeling of freedom. No longer are the thoughts that were previously tossing around in my head locked up inside with their own echo. Instead they are out in the open.
Maybe they will be read by hundreds or thousands (yeah, right), by a small handful (more likely), or even noone. Maybe they will inspire hope, thought, laughter, fear, scorn, pity, wonder, curiosity… Maybe they will have no effect on anyone at all.
But the words that I release are now free to do something other than torture me from the inside.