Music, Words & Dance - Mediums of Emotion
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I write for the same reason I read—to feel. It’s also the reason I love music, from country to metal and many genres in-between. It’s also the reason I love dancing, salsa, bachata, kizomba and zouk.
There’s something powerful about emotions expressed in deep or poetic sentences, on the cusp of a guitar riff, or while moving in unison, making art with another human being on the dance floor.
Emotion is what makes art compelling, what pulls our hearts into it and makes us cry or laugh or scream. And that’s why, since publishing the first book in the Naked Truth Poetry series in April, I’ve been looking to connect with readers through different mediums.
The book world is vast and broad, but I feel like my book is more similar to an album rather than other romance novels. For me, music and dance are the purest forms of emotion, and this book is encapsulated by both.
Music was my language, and dance was my way of expressing it.
I had never learned to express my emotions to myself or to anyone else, and I often kept them hidden and bottled up, due to shame or fear that they would get me into trouble. I was afraid of falling in love with the wrong person. I was afraid that my family would judge me. And yet, these songs that I put in playlists on my iPod and my Youtube Account held me together.
Likewise, when I went out to dance, I would close my eyes and forget the rest of the world, wrapped up in someone’s arms, feeling safe and full of life and emotion. When I was dancing, writing or listening to music were the only times that I allowed my emotions to flow, that I accepted the parts of myself that I was scared of.
And to this day, music continues to play a huge role in my life, which is why, when talking about my books, doing it through the medium of music is one of the most powerful to me.
During certain moments in the books, I latched on to particular songs that reached the depth of heartbreak or conflict I was experiencing, and I would play the songs on repeat. To this day, certain songs bring me right back to a moment in time, in the past, often enveloped in someone else.
Last week, I came across the song ‘Last Night’ by Morgan Wallen which has the exact same melancholy groove that hooks into my soul and transports me to the past. It opens my heart, even now, when that heartbreak is long in the past, it makes me remember exactly how I felt. If this song had come out in 2017, it would have been my anthem.
Music has power, just like dancing and writing. Because sometimes our hearts don’t use words to tell us things, they show us by feeling things. They fill, flood, burn pound. They let us know we’re alive, even if it hurts.
I wrote my books because I want to connect with other people who have felt the same thing, who have been ripped apart by their own emotions, torn between what they want and what they need, chasing a person that they felt like they couldn’t live without, even though it was killing them.
I wrote these books because I wanted to pen a story just as full of emotions as the songs that played in my mind, just as intimate as the dancing that brought me to life.