One of those afternoons when everything feels irrelevant, tiresome, flavorless, I found myself sitting in a chair by a wide-open window, guitar on my lap, repeating the same note over and over — a single note.
It was one of those times when the body runs on autopilot, and when you finally look down, you realize some part of you is doing something you never asked it to do — or at least something you’re not aware of having asked for.
I looked to see what I was playing: it was the thinnest string, the lowest one, the low E.
Mi, mi, mi, mi…
Mi, mimi, mi, mi…
Mimi, mimi, mi, mi…
A single sound, dull, unemotional, with no “personality” of its own.
Mi, mi, mimi, mi.
Without any thought mediating it, with my free hand I pressed the string down on the third fret. (If you don’t know guitars, those are the little bars along the “neck,” counted starting from the one farthest from you — and if you do know, sorry for the mansplaining.)
It was a G. I played it, and everything changed: the sound of the two notes, one after the other, gave off a feeling of melancholy, of nostalgia… But if I moved my finger just one fret “up,” toward the body of the guitar, the sound filled with light.
And if I pressed the same string down on the first fret (F), it felt as though the melody wanted to take off, as if something necessarily had to come after it.
And then I thought that maybe nothing is beautiful or ugly, good or bad, on its own — that maybe everything depends on what we put after it, or what came before it.
Perhaps the biggest takeaway I got from that hot afternoon, and the one I want to share with you today, is this: Don’t be a single E. Not a C, not a D either — it doesn’t matter: never be just one note on its own. Surround yourself with others, discover which ones bring you joy, which ones push you toward new places, and which ones lead you back home — but don’t forget that sometimes an E also needs that G, because life has its nostalgic moments too, and those moments are necessary, because they’re part of living.
I think what I’m trying to say is that the melody we compose depends on us, and on what we choose to put around ourselves.
