Words are not my native language. Before I was able to communicate with words, I communicated through music.
Ever since I was a little girl, I knew that music would play an important role in how I define myself: how I express my desires, emotions and personal identity.
Around age 4, I began to develop spoken language. Following that, I was enrolled in a few years of speech therapy in an attempt to “catch up” with the language used by my surrounding society. Even as I continued to develop the spoken and written language that my society uses to communicate, I always struggled to fit in. I was shy, insecure, unsure how to make or keep friends and romantic relations.
At the age of 6, I began classical training on the piano. Not long afterward, I began to write and compose my own material. In fact, I loved it so much that I even pursued a Bachelor of Arts degree specializing in Music Technology, and I still continue to record, produce and perform my work when the time and space allows.
At any occasion I walk towards a piano on stage at a recital or a show, an unexplainable energy takes over my consciousness. As long as I am up there on that stage playing on that piano, my shyness and insecurity disappears.
How to best describe it? A psychological orgasm.
Music is what gave me my “voice”. The piano serves as my interpreter. The piano has provided me with the ability to translate my emotions far more accurately than I ever could by spoken word or written language.
With every live performance on stage, my soul transforms into a creature of raw emotion and authenticity. The piano enables me to translate what I am trying to communicate to my audience. When my audience witnesses how I articulate through music performance, they quickly learn that I am a person filled with intensity, sorrow, rage, sexuality, vigor, adventure, and a hint of laughter.
How to best describe the feeling of connecting to my audience? Euphoria.
You are my audience. And with the piano, I expose my heart to you through my native language.
This article was written in contribution to the Autism Positivity 2014 Flash Blog. Click here to learn more about The Autism Positivity Project and its various contributors.
