and Words
2 a.m. and she calls me ′cause I’m still awake
“Can you help me unravel my latest mistake?
I don′t love him, winter just wasn’t my season”
Yeah, we walk through the doors, so accusing, their eyes
Like they have any right at all to criticize
Hypocrites, you’re all here for the very same reason
′Cause you can′t jump the track, we’re like cars on a cable
And life′s like an hourglass glued to the table
No one can find the rewind button, girl
So cradle your head in your hands
And breathe, just breathe
Oh, breathe, just breathe
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
I started this blog over four years ago. A dear friend who read my impassioned posts on Facebook encouraged me. While I had never written professionally (and still haven’t), I kept an online journal decades ago. Furthermore, I do not exaggerate when I claim that my writing led me to find the love of my life, or more accurately, for her to find me. However, I first put that journal on ice and eventually pulled the plug. I have told this story several times; for those who have read my writing, you’ll remember.
While WordPress allows the author to scope the visibility of particular posts, I choose not to. My posts are visible to everyone. I try to update this blog once every two weeks; it keeps me accountable. I imagine I’ll run out of songs or memories someday, though until then, the posts continue. When I first started, I texted the links to the posts to a handful of friends. One day, I got an unexpected response.
My friend asked, “Why do you write?” While she meant no harm by asking, she was genuinely curious. Though I spent my time thinking through ideas and arranging words, I had never contemplated the response to that question.
A friend once mentioned that everything in your home should be useful or beautiful, according to your standards. He was quoting someone, but the name eludes me. He may have been referring to William Morris regarding simplifying your living spaces.
I’ve worked in tech for decades; I am unapologetically a computer geek. Therefore, friends continue to work in the business; they work in technology. In our world, our attention is laser-focused on tasks that do useful things. We rarely think about beautiful things and thus disproportionately devalue fanciful activities. Therefore, when my friend asked why I wrote, I heard her voice with confusion, if not disdain. I heard it this way even when such sentiment wasn’t expressed.
Furthermore, I felt this impression due to years of Chinese cultural baggage. To her credit, my mom was more subtle about nudging me in a particular direction. She praised those from our blue-collar Cantonese community who modeled that behavior. We respected those who aspired for a college education. She spoke about the sparse college graduates in hushed tones. What about those rare souls who graduated and worked in technology? Our community spoke of them with a definitive reverence, just short of deification.
My sister and I graduated from the University of Miami on the same day. She earned a mechanical engineering degree; I earned two degrees (computer engineering and computer science). Once the dust settled, it felt like a cultural ascension.
Years of cultural and vocational baggage bore their weight on me as I continued to scribe these words. While rationally, I heard my friend’s voice about both useful and beautiful things. I grew up firmly on the ‘useful things’ side of the figurative fence; my career only deepened this entrenchment. How dare I waste my time and energy performing fanciful acts that serve only to amuse myself?
I honestly can’t remember when I first heard Anna Nalick’s Breathe (2 AM). It might’ve been the radio, or it might’ve been from this scene from Grey’s Anatomy. I don’t recall when I got the album, but I did. The music and the words enchanted me, and thus it became a part of my rotation. Once I turned my collection completely digital, it got consistent play from playlists. Though recently, as I chanted the words while it played, I finally found my simple answer to that question:
2 a.m. and I’m still awake, writing a song
If I get it all down on paper, it’s no longer inside of me
Threatening the life it belongs to
I write simply because I must. I find it easier to write than not to write. Similarly, we find it easier to sneeze or cough than not to sneeze or cough. Ideas float around in my head like flotsam, a figurative landfill of ideas, until I can clear the clutter. Writing them down clears out that clutter. It unburdens my mind.
Writing it all down empowers me to take these fragments like brightly-colored Lego bricks and combine them into well-formed ideas. The same bricks assembled differently will yield wildly different shapes. Similarly, the same words arranged differently will convey wildly different ideas. One key point, when combined with another, persuades the reader.
I write because my words led a wonderful woman to find me. Though I didn’t know it at the time, this was nothing short of magical. To willfully stop writing feels a bit too much like tempting fate. It feels like betraying the person who wrote those decades ago, who wrote passionately about the weather. To know her has made me a better and kinder person; writing is a big part of that journey.
I write because my father also wrote. Though I had long forgotten about it, he kept a journal as he learned English. He wrote with ink on paper as a man of nearly no education in a language he learned through sheer willpower. And decades later, I, his only son, instinctively follow in his footsteps. I write by tapping on keys on a computer. With each keystroke, I feel his blood in my veins and maintain that etheral connection to him.
I write to liberate myself from the obsession with only ‘useful’ things. I concede that there’s room for that which is fanciful, which does little else but feed the soul. Ultimately, these words sometimes bring me joy, sadness, anger, or contentment. I willfully bite into that figurative emotional creamsicle. To think or feel nothing is infinitely worse than taking the good with the bad. To live unencumbered is a great adventure.
That’s why I write.