This article was originally published on LinkedIn and has been adapted for this blog.
“Everything I’ve got that is good in my life has come through my love of music.”
— Noel Gallagher
I could never relate to people who listen to music merely as a form of escapism, or a means to blow off steam or pass the time.
For as long as I can remember, music has taught me everything I needed to know about life. It has always been the operating system through which I make sense of the world around me.
Out of all things, music has taught me to closely attune to the details — to actually listen, rather than just hear. It has taught me patience, as well as the determination in taking things apart to understand how they work.
I could literally spend hours on end playing and replaying an album, or even a single song, obsessively nerding out about the tiniest lyrical nuances and sonic textures, to get to the very heart of why it moved me so deeply.
And quite naturally, I’d also devour every interview, every documentary, and every piece of writing I could possibly find to better grasp the artist’s point of view.
In turn, my love for music bled into other passions as well. If it weren’t for music, I wouldn’t have had much interest in reading, in general. Music taught me how to be curious, showing me that most things are more interesting than they seem.
The first book I genuinely read as a teenager was an anti-war novel by Dalton Trumbo, titled Johnny Got His Gun, only because Metallica’s song “One” is based on it. And that opened the floodgates to everything else.
Suddenly, reading never seemed boring anymore, as I realised that everything is a world unto itself. So, I picked up whatever I personally wanted to learn more about, regardless of genre, or whether or not it had a musical connection.
And of course, if it weren’t for music, I wouldn’t have had an interest in writing, either. At least for me, one of the most beautiful things about music is the surreal sense of connection that you experience to its artist.
A well-written piece of music can make you feel as though the artist has stood outside of time, looked into your life, and documented every emotion that you didn’t know how to name.
Whenever I sit down to write anything, I hope to achieve the same effect. Despite being a maddeningly difficult craft, there’s a quiet thrill in searching for the “mot juste”, or the exact, right word to communicate an idea. (Or maybe I’m just crazy in that way.)
And in finding the right words for myself, I just might be naming something for a reader who hasn’t yet known how to say it.
Looking back at the articles I’ve published over the span of 6 to 8 years, I realised that the ones that felt the most fulfilling and natural to me were ones connected to music in some way.
So, from here on in, I’ve decided to focus more intently on music writing — exploring and dissecting records, and drawing practical lessons from the way they move and change us.
In the meantime, a few enhancements to the site design are still underway, so do bear with me as things evolve.
Thank you for reading, and here’s to an exciting new run!
Izzat Zailan 