I remember vividly that I was watching this brilliant film, Begin Again, last summer. It’s almost a musical, and the songs were unexpectedly very well composed and sung. When Keira Knightley so beautifully rendered A Step You Can’t Take Back, it was just like a reminder knocking on the door of my heart. My stubbornness has for long convinced me that many times, I would, as the lyric goes, find myself at the subway, with my world in a bag by my side.
Perhaps we are all cursed or destined in a similar manner—one way or another.
I enjoy writing very much. I’ve for long kept the habit of journaling, although I rarely recount the bygones, rather, it’s more often thoughts and ideas that are jotted down. Not that I firmly believe there’s treasure hidden in my stories that I ought not to share, quite the contrary, I am simply more faithful to the journey ahead, and rarely look back to soak myself into the ocean of sentiments and distorted memories. And I don’t think I am an avid story-teller that shares things about himself, or at least I have not attempted to be one. Yet, when I recently came to terms with one’s occasional inability to alter myriads of circumstances and came to my senses with my core and principles, I began to convince myself of the liberating truth that we are all given the power to live without mundane shackles and to transcend with love and awakening clarity.
For me, writing, by any means, on any platforms, is not about saying out loud one’s mind in an echo chamber, for a dosage of some sort of wobbly self-determination. It is, instead, a lone island of solidarity where seagulls are, of their own free will, wholeheartedly venerating the magnificence of being.
On most occasions, it is not that we ought to, but we choose to.
“Starry, starry night
Portraits hung in empty halls
Frameless heads on nameless walls
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget
Like the strangers that you've met
The ragged men in ragged clothes
The silver thorn of a bloody rose
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow
Now I think I know what you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would not listen
They're not listening still
Perhaps they never will"
—Vincent by Don McLean