There’s probably something you used to do that made you lose track of time. Something you loved. Something that made you feel alive and somewhere along the way, you stopped doing it. Not because you stopped loving it but because life happened.
In the early noughties, I discovered a software program called WaveLab and another called Hip Hop Ejay.
At the time, they changed my world.
I could take an LP, CD or cassette tape, feed the beat into WaveLab and then record my lyrics over the top.
I also learnt how to build my own beats from scratch using the e-instruments and loops within Hip Hop Ejay.
This was serious business. Well… serious business to me. I used both programs to make what we would later call a “mixtape”, which I burnt to CD and gave to friends and family.
My CD was called, This Cun-Tree Bears No Fruit. Did you see what I did there? I’m still impressed by that title. 😝
The CD had track titles like A Man Has Got To Know, Black Beauty and a few others I can’t remember right now.
For Black Beauty, I used Barry White’s I’m Gonna Love You Just A Little Bit More and dropped 16 bars into the instrumental before the Love Doctor came in with his silky verses.
Then the rap artist, Nas used the same beat for No Ideas Original on The Lost Tapes album. The irony of his track title was not lost on me and that was when I knew I was on to something.
I padded out the CD with a few tracks from established artists too, including Common’s A Song for Assata from Like Water for Chocolate and Guru’s Who’s There from the Jazzmatazz, Street Soul album.
I was creating, experimenting, playing, learning and having fun, then the trend changed.
The software became more sophisticated.
Cubase and Reason hit the shelves. More possibilities. More complexity.
Around that time, something else happened.
I decided I needed to get serious.
You know…earn money, buy a house, pay for car insurance and in general, do big man things.
So I paused and got a job and somewhere in amongst all of that “grown-up” stuff, the music went quiet but it didn’t disappear.
In 2006, I revisited that creative part of myself through poetry. One month, I churned out up to 20 poems. The result eventually became Wordplay Poems, published in 2012.
You can check out the blog here:
Then, somewhere along the line, I got back to grown-up stuff again and put the pen down………again!!!!
Why do we do that?
What is it that causes some of us to put a hold on the things that bring us the most fulfilment?
Why do we treat the things that make us feel most alive as optional?
Why do we decide that writing, travelling, reading, studying, performing, exercising, creating or competing can wait until everything else is taken care of?
We’ve somehow convinced ourselves that the things that fulfil us are luxuries. A nice to have. Something we’ll get around to when the “important stuff” is done.
- What if those things are important?
- What if they’re not distractions from life?
- What if they’re part of what makes life worth living?
- At what point do we decide that the conventional route is the only route?
- Who gets to decide what “conventional” means?
Maybe your version of a fulfilled life doesn’t look conventional. Maybe it’s something you haven’t done in 20 years. Maybe it’s something you’ve never done at all.
The point is, I’m beginning to think these things shouldn’t be negotiable.
They shouldn’t be what we squeeze into the gaps after everything else has been dealt with. They should have a place at the table.
The Comeback
Recently, I pulled out the quill pen again. Well, not literally but you get the idea.
I started writing again, and that eventually resulted in a music album, Philiahood by Azibu Sounds.
The process has been immersive, fulfilling and so much fun.
There’s something incredibly satisfying about returning to a part of yourself that you thought had been left behind.
Maybe it’s waiting for you to remember or for you to make some space. To stop telling yourself that you’re too busy, too old, too responsible or too far down the road to go back.
That’s what a comeback really is. Not becoming someone new but returning to someone you never stopped being.
So maybe the question isn’t why we stopped doing the things that fulfilled us.
Maybe the better question is, why did we ever convince ourselves that we had to stop?
What did you put down that you’re ready to pick back up? Let me know in the comments section.
Philiahood by Azibu Sounds is out now on all major streaming platforms.
