Feel the Beat!

Singing..

I love to sing. Every day when I come home from school, I turn on my music and start singing at the top of my lungs. If I had a frustrating day, I would probably listen to loud rock, while if I had come home from school feeling sad or lonely, I would probably listen and sing along to more depressing songs. Sometimes I wonder why it isn’t the other way around; if I were sad wouldn’t I listen to happy music to make me feel better? But when I have certain feelings I want to express them through my singing, even if it’s the saddest song. Since I can relate to the lyrics, it makes me feel like I’m not alone. There are others who share my feelings. To me, singing is like crying. When something bad happens and you feel like crying, you shouldn’t hold back, otherwise you would be bottling up your feelings. My philosophy is: Either you cry or you don’t. If you cry, then you let it out right then and there, and you never ever cry for that reason again. If you don’t cry, then you completely forget about the situation and never cry for it either. It’s the same thing with singing. Except when you sing a song, it could mean something completely different to you than it did last time you sang it. With a song, every situation is different, because there is so much to take in; the sounds, the lyrics, the instruments… These components are what make a song, a song.

To me, music is like my own personal sun. It’s what gets me up in the morning, helps me see through the day, and shines light upon the darkest situations. It illuminates my day with so many emotions, and can be blocked easily by big gray rain clouds and make me confused. But whether or not it starts raining, I can find my way around those clouds and see that the sun was always there, brightly shining, trying to force its way through the confusion. And when the day is over, and the moon comes out, surrounded by tiny stars, my sun is still there, filling my dreams with relaxing and happy images that I know will help me through the day that still hasn’t arrived.

Music is so inspiring. In fact, I’m listening to music right now, listening to each note and lyric, letting those guide my writing. My dad told me that when you write, the music you are listening to makes your “brain juice” flow, which makes you think more and want to write more. To some people it can be a distraction, but for me it’s the total opposite. It’s like second nature for me to sing; it doesn’t interrupt my thoughts or distract me, I just sing without realizing it. I can’t help doing something that I love so much, and if I lost my voice, I would be so sad. Just like dancing, I can’t live without my music. In a way, dancing and music are related. As a matter of fact, they work together in a sense. It would be kind of hard to dance without music, because there would be no beat, no tempo to dance to. When you dance, you listen to the lyrics to express the moves. You wouldn’t just get up and start dancing to nothing, but when I hear a song, I get this feeling that makes me want to dance. I guess that is why I love, not only dancing so much, but music as well, because without music there is no dance. If there was no music, I could never enjoy dancing like I do.

I was just thinking right now, although it may be off topic, but I was thinking about situations that make me, or anyone, cry. It’s funny, because sometimes I hear a song and my eyes tear up and I just want to cry, for no real, apparent reason. There aren’t many songs that make me do this, but strangely, the few songs that do cause this effect are the number one songs on my 25 most played songs. It isn’t that I’m constantly sad and looking for a place to escape to, but hearing these songs just makes me think a lot about things. They’re inspiring because they create such strong feelings in me, because I have never experienced them before. You could say that they make me curious, so I explore the meaning behind the words, and I may not really be able to relate to them, but I understand where these feelings are coming from.

I’m  happy that this is my passion. The thing is, if my passion was basketball, I wouldn’t be able to write the way I am now. It just doesn’t seem to be inspiring to me, and to write about my passion I have to be inspired. Unless I’m coming home from a basketball practice and just had this feeling of I HAVE to write about this, then maybe I would be able to accomplish something, but otherwise, I couldn’t see myself sitting at home just writing about it so passionately as I am now. The difference is, at this very moment, I’m listening to the most inspiring songs that I have on my iPod. These songs are what make these words come out of my head, and on to this post. Music is my everything; I can’t possibly live without it.

Yesterday..

Well yesterday I went to my ballet class, like I do every Monday and Wednesday, and I didn’t really think it would be all that different than it usually was. I showed up and saw my fellow dancers there. We had a conversation about a dance that we were putting together for a little show, and then we entered class. Usually we always start off with a warm-up that includes stretching the back and leg muscles. Then we started the bar exercise which we usually memorize at the beginning of the year. The first “barra” (as they say in spanish, for bar exercise) is always the easiest. It consists of plies [pli- ae] and releves [re-le-vae], which are probably the most simple steps in ballet. But as we were practicing these, the teacher stopped us, which was unusual, and asked us to do plie and stay in that position. She explained what feeling you were supposed to get as you bent your knees (that is what you do in plies) and what part of the legs you were working. Then, we did it again and ,unlike I might have felt before she explained, it actually hurt. I never really thought of this step to be all that painful, but as soon as I did, I was glad the teacher had explained. There were a lot of things that the ballet instructor explained to us that class yesterday, such as where your shoulder plates needed to be and how that created good posture. As I got home last night and was getting ready for bed, I kept thinking over and over in my head, what if she hadn’t gone in to depth with these simple steps? What if I hadn’t learned to do this correctly now? If I hadn’t, would I ever have learned it later on? That thought kept piercing my brain, and I just kept wondering about it. If I had never learned to do it correctly, it would be so much harder to get it in the future, and not only that, but I had been doing it this way my whole life!! Imagine, 11 years of dancing and I have been doing one of the most simplest steps incorrectly. Could that have been affecting my skills? Now I know though, that doesn’t matter anymore, because now I know and now I will apply my new knowledge to my dancing. See, when we have been doing something wrong our whole lives, we take the opportunity to correct that mistake. And having this experience has really helped me realize (and this has nothing to do with dancing) that its not too late to learn from your mistakes. I know now that you have to ask to get things right, and people just seem so afraid to ask questions. Some people say that it makes them feel stupid, but it makes you quite the opposite. Asking questions shows that you want to learn more things and understand better. I know that asking questions has helped me come a long way academically and through dancing. People may also be scared to ask questions becuase they think that they should have the answers to all their questions. Although we all like to feel like we know so much, not asking questions is refraining you from becoming the best you can possibly be.

Its funny what a simple ballet class can make you think. Some days, you might think, “Gosh this is so boring and seems pointless.” Other days you might get out of class and say, “Oh, I never knew that was the way you did it,” and there are times where you feel so happy that you’re doing it because you love it and you learn so much. Its not very ordinary that I walk out of a ballet class and start thinking of it as a life lesson, but situations like mine just show that the simplest things can teach us something important. And maybe what you just read will make you roll your eyes and think,”Whatever, its not that big of a deal,” but it truly has made me think. And if something that you never realized suddenly just popped out in front of you and finally made you see, take the time to think why it affected you. Its not that hard. Really.

Dance, Dance..

So I guess I should tell you that I’m a dancer. I have been for the last 11 years of my life. It seems like the second I put on those ballet slippers, they weren’t gonna come off. But since I’ve moved a few times, it has been hard to stay at whatever level I was before I moved. For example, before I moved to Costa Rica, and lived in El Salvador, I was in a competitive dance academy that had won several trophy’s, medals, and awards for their outstanding competetive dancing, and I was part of that group. But when I moved here to Costa Rica, it has changed so much. I don’t dance at the level that I used to, which can be depressing at times because supposedly you advance as you get older, not go down on the “dancer’s scale.” The thing is, if I do want to enter the competetive dance group here, I have to basically dedicate my life to dancing, but I do have a social life, and of course school and homework… So why keep dancing?Let’s just put it this way. If I stop dancing, life would be miserable for me. Its like trying to quit a drug or alcohol addiction; nearly impossible. I would just never be happy; I’d have no way of releasing my energy or emotions. And that is what dance is to me. Without it, I’d probably be so stressed out, I would start getting grey hair. Dancing has always been a way to channel my emotions. If I were angry, I would dance aggresively, and if I were excited or happy I would dance with positive energy. I just hope that I’ll be able to do this for a LONG time. As long as I possibly can. Because dancing is worth breaking a leg.