Just create

An analogy (and I got some news too!).

Special announcement; Feelings Finding Home loves knocking at your door on Thursday, but this week, I’ll come knocking on Sunday as well. I hope you let me in. I’m introducing something new and sweet in this warm and complex home we share, hope you love it!

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A song I wrote on my guitar! It's called “Car that heard it all.” (ps; do you pronounce the T in Chevrolet?)

Our love is tough love, my Yamaha C-40 baby and I.

I’m no stranger to frustration whenever I play guitar, it seems.

Aahhhhhhhhhhbhh!!!!!!

Knows how to make me angry, and I say it to its face. That I wish Dad never gave away the piano to the church choir, because I could have learned it and made music in those black and white keys, instead of some annoying six strings. And I tell myself that maybe I might never be like one of those cool musicians who sing while standing proud with their guitars strapped to their shoulders, in the warmth of a silver spotlight.

What if those flutes from childhood were still here? Maybe I could have been a perfect flute player.

People ask “Do you play guitar?”

“Yes, I do, but it’s not like you can depend on me to play for your band or something, I would mismatch the tempo.” I jokingly say, but it’s not a joke.

But then, there are other moments, where it feels like I have found my Ikigai. It’s when my guitar can somehow translate my feelings into a sound, giving form to something invisible, substance to something intangible. And those are the moments I say I will never let it go. It’s like I can look at it across a room and it goes, “yeah, tuko pamoja.” And I affirm, “Yes, we are together.”

I might be learning guitar at a really slow pace, but I want to continue reminding myself that it’s already part of me. That we share something beautiful, even if I don’t play it as good as Hozier does. That even if my barred chords sound cranky and the songs I write on it are sometimes unclear, it’s still a song I brought into existence.

I made up an analogy.

If you create, and I mean anything not just what people think is “art,” then you become like a tree. What you create becomes a branch, and like birds, some people will make a nest on your branches, they will find a home. And of course if the branch is weak it might as well break and fall and become food for the worms. The same worms that will be good for your soil, for you to grow and make better branches. On and on, what you make is a branch, food for the worm that comes back to you, a nest, a home to somebody.

So whoever you are, just create!

You can’t believe how I once walked into this café and found a book called “I wrote this for you” by Iain S. Thomas (read the words in the picture below). And just maybe, just maybe, my heart was never the same again.

See you on Sunday, till then, sending love &

goosebumps!

The trees that decided not to die, by Iain S.Thomas.

In case it's harder to read on the picture, will type it out for you!

The trees that decided not to die

As I put down my pen, I know someone, somewhere is picking up theirs.

I know that someone, somewhere is playing a guitar for the first time.

I know someone, somewhere is dipping a paintbrush and marking a field of white.

I know that someone, somewhere is singing a song that's never been sung.

Perhaps someone, somewhere will create something so beautiful and moving, it will change the world.

Perhaps that somewhere is here.

Perhaps that someone, is you.