I think for as long as I could remember, music was never a thing I would be intentional about. Like, you know when you hear someone say something like, “I feel like listening to music,” or “I’m in the mood to listen to music.” It has never been that kind of thing for me where I will myself to listen. Like an item on a to-do list or a craving or a task to accomplish. It has long become a way of life.
I mean I do crave music. But not in that way where I’ve not listened to it for a while. The only craving I have would be when I want to listen to a particular genre of music. Like I’d been listening to blues for the longest time this year, Regular R&B, Korean Blues and sometime back, even Japanese blues. But recently, I’ve been having this yearning for Gospel, and so that’s the genre of music I’ve mostly been listening to these days.
When I say, music has become a way of life, it means that most of the things I do every day, there is music in the background. When I want to write, like the regular stuff, it’s Korean blues. If I’m going to write something happy, I get happy music on my playlist to get me in that mood. Recently I wanted to write a scary story, and it had to be Christmas oriented, so I kid you not, I searched “Creepy Christmas playlist,” on Spotify and it came out. I switched off my lights and began to write. I was terrified out of my mind, but that was what led me to write that story, and I felt really proud of myself afterwards.
Yeah, I was one of those people that say that a person is deceiving themselves when they say they read with music. But I soon schooled myself to understand that it depends on the type of music. When you listen to music by Nigeria’s Shallipoppi, you can’t kid yourself into thinking what you’re doing there is studying. When I want to study, I get good Lo-fi music, preferably one where there are no words and mostly instrumentals and I’m reading away. I don’t pay attention to anything but my books in that moment and the Lo-fi fades into the background.
What does make music make me feel? I think my answer is everything. I’ve noticed that I’m not the type that goes to listen to sad music when I’m sad. I just ride it out, I guess. But there are times when I listen to music and it gets to a song that gives me the sad type of nostalgia. I don’t change it all the time. Sometimes I just listen, reminisce if I really need to, and once the song goes, that’s it.
The happiness I feel when I listen to good music is unmatched. I always have my Shazam on the ready for when I randomly hear songs I like and my high point when I’m on social media apps is when I find good music and immediately head to the app where I download my songs from. Music is peace. Music is joy. Music is me, and I’m glad #decemberinleo has given me a chance to share that with you.
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