For as long as I can remember, English has never been my strong subject. I battled through primary school trying my hardest to be able to read as well as everyone else, to write as neatly as my old sister or be able to understand how words on a piece of paper have revolutionised a culture. Look at the works of William Shakespeare for example.
Some of my youngest memories go back to reading hour in primary school, everyone reaching in their book-bags for something inspiring whilst I normally took the time to have a nap or be a ‘pain-in-the-backside’ for the teacher. I regret this. Yet at the same time I believe finding your own way into a love for literature is more rewarding. Discovering your own interests is far more important than being pushed into something from a young age. Or any age to be honest. That’s my opinion.
Away from the reading side of things, the writing was never my strong suit either. I had extra teaching support and always struggled with grammar, verbs, nouns, sentence structure and so forth. Something I did find interesting from a young age however, was music. Being aware of how a melody without lyrics could create an emotion, how a chord progression and a rhythm could inspire. This could have been subconsciously created by my Dad. I remember every Saturday and Sunday morning he would play his music collection. Everything from Genesis to Bruce Springsteen. My dad likes to think he is open to all music but it seems to be that if there isn’t a guitar in the song, he isn’t interested. He’d definitely hate me for pointing that out.
As my interest in music developed, I developed. I grew up. The interest turned more into a passion. This passion is something I hold today, stronger than ever, the desire to expand my knowledge. As my interest into the world of music expanded, I grew an intellectual interest into literature for the first time in my life. Starting with artists such as Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen slowly led into more such as Nirvana, Foo Fighters and Machine Head. All of these being a wide range in regards to musical genre, yet they all had one thing in common, something I picked up on quickly, poetry. Not all lyrics in songs rhyme, neither do poems. Song structures and poetic structures run simultaneously. My music taste grew, my studies into lyrical structure expanded, I grew an interest into poetry.
Whilst all this was going on, I wrote my own music, my own lyrics, my own poems. These artists inspired me, they still do today, the more I learnt the better I wanted to be as a song writer. The more I looked into poetry, the more I realised that a great deal of poems and songs are based upon a story, an experience or a historical event. This eventually pushed my younger, adventurous self towards books. The imaginations of many authors that I envy, the events of history that I find hard to believe, and how they have changed society and cultures as we know them today. The more music I listened to, the more poems I read, the more stories I learnt about, the more history I took onboard. It was a dramatically encouraging roll-on effect.
To me words can change everything, one sentence can inspire a generation. Similar to the effects of one song. Look at Bob Dylan’s ‘Blowing in the Wind’, and how it affected the Civil Rights Movement. How Martin Luther King’s speech opened people’s eyes (in a metaphorical sense, not literally).
I like to think my own music can inspire others. Besides everything, they’re my own views after all, my own emotions and my own experiences being expressed. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’m not one to talk about my feelings. Having a guitar in my hands and a notepad in front of me helps me express a great deal. Writing music keeps me sane. Yet sometimes it drives me insane when it doesn’t come together smoothly. That frustration will be contained and left unheard of for now.
No matter who you are, where you’re from, where you are now, who you know, or your occupation, don’t become detached from the power of words. The power of music. The evolution of these topics combined together. A story isn’t a story unless it’s told to the masses.
Ryan Anthony 