Jealousy is a sad emotion

Warning: introspective post about myself. doesn’t make much sense.

I’m feeling weepy in this moment, listening to Khamsina – that’s Stevie to you and me – sing her beautiful songs. She makes me think of Enya, of Susan Enan, of Kate Rusby, of Leonard Cohen, of Eva Cassidy. And they are all dear favourites of mine.

So where does jealousy come into this? Well, something few people I now count as my friends know about me is that I used to sincerely wish for a life singing and performing on a stage, and something which nobody knows is that that’s still a dream of mine. And now Stevie is fulfilling it. I really like her, both as a person and as a musician, and I can see she deserves it seeing how hard she works at it, so my jealousy is tempered with shame and regret, because I know I never pushed myself enough and was never brave enough to show people that it was my dream.

I don’t talk about it because I haven’t got a lot of confidence in my musical skill. I have a decent voice but it’s almost totally untrained, and I’ve never had the dedication to practice playing the guitar or piano until I reach a professional standards. Even though I feel I have a few songs which are really good, it’s not like I can sit down and just write a good song – it seems totally haphazard when something clicks and 99% of the time what comes out sounds wrong. Not like what’s in my heart. Lyrics are something I really value so I spend a lot of time working on them, and they’re the one thing I am relatively proud of.

The thing I lack is other people. People who I can ask to honestly critique my music rather than just feel too impolite to say “that line is a cliché” or “you shouldn’t try to sing that high”, and someone who can make suggestions because my music is like most things I think about or create: at its birth, private, but as is my nature I want to share, so I seek input from those I love and trust. I also need people to play with, to write accompaniments with. It’s like the old saying: “one hand can’t clap on its own”. When I am in creation with another, I have ideas falling over themselves. It’s as if the interest of another in my self and what is in my soul frees my tongue and fingers and mind to reach a hand to my heart.

I want to write songs with others because that’s when I am happiest. It’s a beautiful thing to write a song with a friend and I miss it so much. Music is poetry and art, yes, but it’s also the highest expression of human perception of and relation to the world and its inhabitants. Doing it alone is self-destructive. Someone with a beautiful voice, and someone else with a knack for poetry, and another with a genius sense of rhythm will create something far more beautiful than a lonely ambitious girl with clumsy fingers and tears in her eyes.

Oh, fuck. None of that makes sense, does it? And I have so much left to say… why do I find it so hard to write what I feel?

It’s just… I love music and can feel it missing in my life. That’s all. Even if it’s just singing in a choir, I need that again. It’s almost like music takes the place of religion in my heart and I… I can feel it missing.