Since I was a kid, I’ve loved music. I couldn’t understand how this mix of sounds and rhythm could make me feel and imagine so much. It was a blend of stories, emotions, moments, and ideas. I felt that every time I listened to a song, I was learning a bit more about how to live and how to truly feel.
In the search for purpose—which everyone faces when envisioning their life—learning a discipline, a trade, or something that would eventually encompass their existence (work, livelihood, and all those thoughts about what a person’s future “should” be or have), I found myself trying to choose something that would make me economically and professionally stable. My mind kept drifting to music. Inevitably, the choice became clear: music would be my life.
A Guitar
In school, I was introduced to the guitar. Luckily, there was a music class—which didn’t seem like much at the time, but now I believe art courses in school are incredibly important. There, I started falling in love with the physical feeling of playing, more than just the sounds I produced.
Learning an instrument is extremely frustrating at first. It’s a constant struggle to make your hands work for you to enjoy the sounds. However, in one moment, when my hands did exactly what I wanted them to, I felt something still difficult to describe. I wanted to feel that way as much as possible. I wanted to improve until I could achieve that feeling at will.
The Inner Workings of Sound
In college, still searching for that feeling stuck in my mind, I learned how sound behaves, or how it should behave. Harmony, composition styles, music history—all those elements that give musicians a deeper understanding of music—began layering in my mind. That feeling, however, was slowly buried under style, context, universally accepted notions of how a specific piece should be played, a framework in which you could “freely” create your own interpretations.
“Your own interpretations”. Buried under a crushing pile of information and expected outcomes. That feeling I had, was growing silent.
An Isolated Incident
For a guitar player in college, practice becomes a daily routine, prioritizing repetition and problem-solving. “The mechanism,” as I understand it, is your body. Improving this mechanism is what eventually enables you to make music effectively. “The planning” refers to phrasing, articulation, and color. These concepts are related to the mechanism but also remain more abstract for me.
One day, frustrated that a piece I was playing lacked both qualities, I decided to turn off the lights in my room, forget everything, and just play.
With a new sense of freedom, I allowed my inner world to guide the piece. I let my emotions and imagination lead, and I found again what was buried under all those layers.
I remembered.
Requiem
While singing in a choir, we were preparing Mozart’s Requiem for a concert. In one of our practice sessions, we experienced the full choir performing the entire work. My mind was focused on my part—what I needed to do and improve. However, when the whole choir began, I felt something I’ll never forget. The sound enveloped me, became part of me, and I became part of it. It was such a new experience but I didn’t think much of it until years later.
Graduation Recital
All those layers, heavier than ever, can freeze you with fear. Worst-case scenarios like mistakes, forgetting the piece—as if the world would end if that happened—play in your mind. You step on stage, feeling your heart pounding, your hands ice-cold, dreading looking into the faces of your audience, grateful for the dark theater, and feeling everyone’s eyes, expecting to be amazed.
In my head, before starting, I wanted only one thing... to feel that hidden feeling, even if just for a second.
In the middle of a piece, I forgot most of those layers. I remembered that isolated incident, and something new arose—a new idea, a new feeling, even harder to describe. At that moment, I tried to understand it as “losing yourself in music.”
Lost in Music
In the middle of that piece, I was myself, but not entirely. It was my inner world connected to something else. I felt like I was the instrument, and music flowed through me. It felt as if music was all that existed in that moment—the world and I became sound, and I was incorporeal for a second. After that, I knew this was what I’d been looking for.
Magic
Years later, after ups and downs, I was on the verge of giving up the guitar entirely. It felt like reality had a way of making you forget why you chose your path, what you felt, and what you’d experienced. Fortunately, thanks to a dear friend, that feeling returned during an improvisation session. Memories and that comforting feeling of pressing the strings, plucking them, creating sound, and making music came rushing back.
After entering the Web3 ecosystem, I listened to an interview with a famous Cuban composer named Leo Brouwer. He spoke about one of his pieces, saying:
“There should be a moment of magic in every piece of music. At least one moment, a couple of notes, a chord, a sonority. If you try to force it, it doesn’t work. But if there’s intuition in the flow of music, there’s a moment when you can try to evoke this magic.”
I was amazed. This was what I’d been trying to understand and experience. After hearing this, I knew what I was searching for. It’s now the fuel that keeps me making music.
One Last Reflection
To all my fellow creators, no matter the medium you use to express yourself, to connect with others, or with something else… lose yourself in the magic that arises in all your creations. Lose yourself in the feeling of imagining, creating, or experiencing the creations of others. You are part of your creations, and they are part of you. Live your art. Be your art. Be magic.
