Music
and history. Mine to be specific.
I'm trying to remember when it started becoming so personal. When I think music and I think my past, the image that comes to mind is, of course, Cameroon. Specifically, me spending an afternoon memorizing a song by Johnny Hallyday: "Oh Marie".
It was the most melodramatic, beautiful, deep and sensual song I could fathom to love. And at the young age that I was, I did; that afternoon didn't pass without me memorizing that entire song. I blasted the song on my family's cd player, rewinding it when I messed up a line, replaying it to make sure I knew it for sure.
I did this weird thing where I walked on all fours around the coffee table in the living room. I could that was me being a weird kid, but I still do that now. When I'm trying to memorize something like a speech or something, I walk around, singing it, act it out or at least say it in different (failed) accents.
That's comforting, I think. To know that despite all the changes that have happened in my life, some things really do stay the same.
Change. Difference.
I don't wanna sound...self-centered or anything but. I just feel like I have changed so much. Not just like maturing and growing into adulthood and responsibility. I just...sometimes I feel like I am so different from the little girl that lived in the big house in Doula, Cameroon. So different from who she would have grown up to be.
Which is silly, right? I mean, life happens.
and change is part of it.
But how much change? And when do you know it's really necessary? Where's the line when becoming a different person means abandoning what you were before...and that something might have been the best thing about you?
My mom still has those moments when something I'm doing reminds her of the things I did when I was younger. Though this is the same mom who has often pointed out how inspired and ingenious I used to be with my originally written short stories before I was 10 and my cute birthday present poetry-or was it a homemade card? Meanwhile, I would be standing there as colorful as a potato, and as joyful as a teenager being yelled at by her mother.
Point is, 18 year old Gaelle is nothing like that. Love and inspiration are not qualities that I can find at home, or from my family members. Music doesn't feel like a part of home either. To me it now feels like an escape, or a cover. Like.... expensive air freshener.
I still love singing, but not so much for the joy of seeing my mom smile. I try avoiding it.
I still love "Oh Marie"...it still makes me want to stop time, yet run from it at the same time.
I'm terrified to face the fact that I have changed, that I may be different. That would mean that I had failed at being that past person. That would mean admitting the fact that my life is no longer about fighting for love as I used to be...in love with love, in love with people.
Now I feel like I need to actually find it first.
I'm trying to remember when it started becoming so personal. When I think music and I think my past, the image that comes to mind is, of course, Cameroon. Specifically, me spending an afternoon memorizing a song by Johnny Hallyday: "Oh Marie".
It was the most melodramatic, beautiful, deep and sensual song I could fathom to love. And at the young age that I was, I did; that afternoon didn't pass without me memorizing that entire song. I blasted the song on my family's cd player, rewinding it when I messed up a line, replaying it to make sure I knew it for sure.
I did this weird thing where I walked on all fours around the coffee table in the living room. I could that was me being a weird kid, but I still do that now. When I'm trying to memorize something like a speech or something, I walk around, singing it, act it out or at least say it in different (failed) accents.
That's comforting, I think. To know that despite all the changes that have happened in my life, some things really do stay the same.
Change. Difference.
I don't wanna sound...self-centered or anything but. I just feel like I have changed so much. Not just like maturing and growing into adulthood and responsibility. I just...sometimes I feel like I am so different from the little girl that lived in the big house in Doula, Cameroon. So different from who she would have grown up to be.
Which is silly, right? I mean, life happens.
and change is part of it.
But how much change? And when do you know it's really necessary? Where's the line when becoming a different person means abandoning what you were before...and that something might have been the best thing about you?
My mom still has those moments when something I'm doing reminds her of the things I did when I was younger. Though this is the same mom who has often pointed out how inspired and ingenious I used to be with my originally written short stories before I was 10 and my cute birthday present poetry-or was it a homemade card? Meanwhile, I would be standing there as colorful as a potato, and as joyful as a teenager being yelled at by her mother.
Point is, 18 year old Gaelle is nothing like that. Love and inspiration are not qualities that I can find at home, or from my family members. Music doesn't feel like a part of home either. To me it now feels like an escape, or a cover. Like.... expensive air freshener.
I still love singing, but not so much for the joy of seeing my mom smile. I try avoiding it.
I still love "Oh Marie"...it still makes me want to stop time, yet run from it at the same time.
I'm terrified to face the fact that I have changed, that I may be different. That would mean that I had failed at being that past person. That would mean admitting the fact that my life is no longer about fighting for love as I used to be...in love with love, in love with people.
Now I feel like I need to actually find it first.
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