The Music In Me

by Wayne
(GA)

Music. To me it is like air, food, warmth, water, safety, and companionship. It isn't just something I hear, it is something that I am. When I am able, everything that I sense, everything that I experience, is music. It doesn't feel like hot or cold, or big or little, or close or far. It "feels" music. It resonates. It flows. Single scenes look like a single bar of music. Grand views look like a symphony with the energies flowing back and forth, melding and being something even more grand. Living things give off the feeling of music. When I sense God it is the most beautiful, perfect sound with an amazing harmonic.

Since I was a child I have always loved music. Music was a soothing, loving wave of support in my life. Without it, I surely would have perished. Unfortunately, it seems to me that when those people who want to control or harm you, they find out about the things you love, they find profound pleasure in taking them away from you. When I was a child my parents did exactly that.

The first time that I experienced the loss of music was when I was but three. For Christmas I was given a drum set. It was red. I remember having it a single day. I was amazed by it. I felt so serious about it. This was something that I needed to be a part of. I remember the last time I got a chance to beat on the drums, I thought that I would continue with this wonderful thing tomorrow. It was to be very important to me. I had strange moments of beating on the drum when the sounds came out like one would expect a drummer to sound like, but in an instant I would go back to the child like, random banging on the drums. Even I was stunned by this finding and wanted ever so much to recover the ability to make the drums sound as they were meant to sound.

The next day as I wandered out to the living room where the drums had been, they were gone! I looked for them. I asked my parents if they knew where they had gone. They said that they didn't know. It was as if they had just disappeared. I was left with the feeling of being stripped of a life force. I went looking for the drums all about the house. I managed to get outside to check the yard.

Then it happened..............I found them. On the side of the house was a door to the underside of the house. I opened the door and there they were, stuffed under the house. Why? Why had they been put there? I then realized that they put them there because they didn't want me to have them. Maybe it was because I played them badly? What had I done wrong to have them taken away? Deep sadness set in. I felt lost. Wasn't this one of the reasons why I came here, to play music?

This pattern of my parents giving me instruments and then taking them away has been a constant for me. A guitar, bongos, piano, harmonica, xylophone, gut-bucket, flute, and I don't know how many other pieces of music were taken from me shortly after I was given them. Even when I was in Choir, my parents never came to see me.

I have kept a connection to music. I collect pieces of music that I really love but even when I have them I don't finish listening the whole song without getting the feeling that I had better put it away for fear of someone taking it away from me. It is but the rare few pieces of music on those rare few moments that I allow a song to connect to me strongly and to be a part of me.

I bought this beautiful guitar that now sits in its hard case next to my bed gathering dust. Every once in a while I take it out to strum the strings and feel them vibrate and sing together. I smell the wood and textures of the instrument and how it feels in my hands and like the first set of drums I have moments of knowing the guitar like I had always played it.............then it is gone. The guitar goes back into its case and returns back to its dusty corner.

I feel little, as if someone else makes me give up what is important to me. I believe that this has also expanded to other parts of my life. It is a feeling of not being allowed to have what I really want. A feeling of being punishing comes over me and thoughts of what a cruel place this is, comes to mind. I have a feeling of not getting done what, at least, is one of the things I came here to do.

Response from Dr. DeFoore

This is powerful at so many different levels, Wayne. I once heard a speaker on the topic of, "If you don't play your music, who will?" This world longs to hear your music. We need to hear your music. There is a deep yearning in the heart and soul of every human being to hear, see and experience the authentic expression of one human soul.

Go back in your memory and give that drum set back to that little boy. And give him back all of those instruments that were taken from him. Reclaim your music! It belongs to you, and no one has the right to take it away from you.

We have a tendency to parent ourselves the way we were parented. I think that's what you're writing about here. Be the kind of parent to your inner child that you wanted and needed, not the kind of parent you had.

Be a champion to that little boy, and let him play his music! You're the only hope he has. And you're the only hope your music has.