The White-Walled Box
It’s what I see every day, since last year. A box with a white wall, where I have the keys to open it and go beyond, but I know I can’t. I used to think that as a homeschooled person for years I will be hard-trained for the never-ending cycle of lockdowns and that I’m prepared for it mentally. Every day is starting to turn into a maddening routine: Wake up, eat breakfast, do assignments and projects, take a bath, eat dinner, and sleep.
Repeat.
I soon realized that I am experiencing more burnouts than usual, been on a roller coaster of mood swings, and the constant longing, longing to get out. To take a break from routine. To go somewhere that’s not a white-walled box.
But I know I can’t. Not when cases are still everywhere.
And that’s where I found a coping mechanism.
I started composing music again.
I remember the last time I composed music was in 2018, where I wrote an original piano composition and played it in public. The Winter Waltz, as I named it. It was a minute-long piano piece, and it was specifically composed for the Junior Original Composition that my music school holds every year. I had a total of 2 piano compositions during my time at my music school, and that’s it. After I quit music school for college, I stopped composing music. I still play my piano for leisure and sing in the Church choir, but I wanted to focus on my studies and the eventual career path that I want to follow, and so seemingly unnecessary activities had to be left on the back burner. Plus, composing music can take time, and I just don’t have time for it at all.
It’s only by being stuck inside the white-walled box that I realized that it’s not having enough time, but not properly allotting time to things that I wish to do. And that I was held back by my concern of not doing the “right way” of composing. Of course, there are still rules to follow, but you learn them along the way. I just have to do it.
What exactly got me into composing music again is through a white paper. A white paper where my sister is sketching an image of a dragon in the night sky. It felt…peaceful and quiet. And somehow, I was inspired to create a simple melody out of it. For the first time since Winter Waltz, I opened my music notation software and just composed. I tried conveying the feeling I got from the picture I saw, and though it wasn’t perfect, I felt a sense of satisfaction from it.
From there, I found a way to go beyond the white-walled box. I imagine sceneries, events, and emotions and paint them in the form of quavers, semibreves, and rests. A group of birds replying back to someone’s bird whistle. Wind chimes turning a windy afternoon into a song. A lone shepherd on green pasture land, singing a song of praise while a flock of sheep listens. I felt free to express what I feel and the stories I want to tell, unlike when I play other people’s music work.
It will not, of course, compare to the world beyond the white-walled box, but composing music, like any other form of art, captures a particular moment in life (whether it be a place, an emotion, or a story) and lets you revisit it again.
And for my case, it opened up windows inside my box and painted colors on those gleaming, seemingly endless white walls.
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