Music as a Map Back to Myself
Updated: Aug 30
This summer didn’t unfold quite the way I expected. I spent more time resting than I had planned, dealt with some health issues, and generally had less energy than I’m used to. Many of the things I thought I might accomplish with that extra summer time simply didn’t happen.
But I got back into playing music, which for me means reconnecting with the synthesizer and singing.
Looking back, I think music became a kind of map. Not a map showing me where to go next or suddenly revealing my life purpose. Nothing that convenient. More like a way of (re)locating myself.
Reconnecting to music helped me notice what held my attention, brought me into my body, challenged me in an engaging way, and connected me to other people. It reminded me that these things matter to me.
Turns Out I Like a Tiny Problem
One of the simplest things music gave me was somewhere specific to place my attention. There is something useful about sitting down with a song and having a concrete problem to explore: What is that synth part doing? What notes am I hearing? How do I make my hands do that? How does my part fit with everything else in the song?
Working with synthesizers adds another layer. I’m not just choosing a sound; I’m shaping it, listening to what changes, and gradually creating something that fits. Sometimes I have a clear idea of what I’m trying to make. Other times I find it through experimentation.
A small adjustment can completely alter a sound’s character. Then I hear it differently against the guitar, voice, or rhythm section—or through the amp instead of my headphones—and suddenly what sounded perfect five minutes ago is absolutely not it.
So I adjust again. There is listening, responding, trying something, noticing what happens, and deciding what to do next. I like that the process allows for revision. Nothing has to be right immediately. I can change something, change it back, leave it alone for a while, or approach it from somewhere completely different.
I can also spend a frankly unreasonable amount of time making tiny changes that most people will probably never notice. And somehow I find this deeply satisfying.
For stretches of time, that becomes the whole task. My attention has somewhere to land: the sound, the notes, what my hands are doing, what I’m hearing.
Sometimes I become completely absorbed. That experience of flow mattered a lot this summer, but I’ve also come to appreciate that creativity doesn’t have to result in flow to be worthwhile. Some days concentration comes easily. Other days my brain has apparently declined the invitation.
And all of that gives me information about myself. What holds my attention when no one is asking me to focus? What am I curious enough to keep returning to? What kind of challenge feels engaging rather than depleting? What actually feels available to me today? Those are useful questions to carry forward.
I Guess Breathing Is a Thing
Singing gave me another way to (re)orient myself. Working with an instrument that is also your body is deeply personal. Your voice carries your history, experiences, patterns, and everything your body has learned along the way. The instrument isn’t separate from you, and it is never exactly the same from one day to the next.
I spent a lot of time paying attention to breath, resonance, tension, support, and where I could feel sound moving through me. Some days those sensations were easy to notice. Other days there was less clarity, or less desire to pay close attention. Both became part of the practice.
And I kept being reminded of something very basic that I am apparently very capable of forgetting: I need to breathe. When a phrase wasn’t sounding right, the answer wasn’t always to push harder. Often it was more breath/more space that was needed. Sometimes I realized I had barely given myself enough breath to begin with.
The cue became less about correcting myself and more about checking in: Can I breathe here? What changes if I give myself a little more breath?
And sometimes nothing dramatic changes. Something is simply difficult that day. I like that singing gives me room to work with the body I have in that particular moment rather than demanding that it become something else first.
Singing asks me to listen outwardly and inwardly at the same time. What am I hearing? What am I noticing? Where is there effort? Where might there be a little more ease? What feels supported? What feels like too much today?
I don’t necessarily have to change everything I notice. The practice can simply be noticing, making an adjustment if one feels available, and continuing from there. That became another way of (re)locating myself, not through analyzing or overriding what was happening, but through curiosity about what was actually there.
It’s Giving Group Project, But Everyone Contributes
There is also the part of music I couldn’t do alone. Playing with other people continues to teach me a lot about the relational side of creativity. Sometimes you’re creating with people you barely know. Other times, you’re doing it with people you’ve spent most of your adult life with. Those are very different experiences. Trust develops differently depending on the people, the context, and what each person brings into the room.
With people you know deeply, making music together can involve a particular kind of vulnerability. As a Scorpio, obviously this is my favourite thing and not at all the worst🙃
These are people who know your history. They have seen you change, struggle, grow, and become different versions of yourself. And unfortunately for everyone involved, they’ve witnessed all of the eras (we all have to live with that knowledge now). For me, those relationships also hold a deep sense of safety, love, and care. I don’t have to explain everything or establish trust from the beginning. There is already a shared understanding built over years.
That doesn’t mean vulnerability disappears. It means there is enough relationship around it that taking a risk, making a mistake, trying something unfamiliar, or letting myself be heard can feel more possible.
Safety isn’t the absence of awkwardness, uncertainty, disagreement, or imperfection. For me it has more to do with knowing there is room for those things without the relationship immediately becoming threatened. There is care, repair when something doesn’t land, and the experience of being known without needing to perform a particular version of myself in order to remain welcome.
Music makes all of this surprisingly visible. At one moment, your job might be to hold something steady underneath what everyone else is doing; at another, to step forward or make room. The song keeps asking for different things from you.
You pay attention not only to your own part, but to the whole. What does the song seem to need right now? Am I filling more space because I think I should or because it adds something? Would I like to come forward here? Is this a moment to listen more closely?
Even shaping a synth sound becomes relational in that context. Something can sound incredible on its own and still not fit the song. That doesn’t mean making yourself smaller. The synth might need to be huge, a voice might need to come forward, or the song might call for someone else to carry more of it.
The question is less How much space am I allowed to take? and more What feels right for what we are creating together?
You bring your own ideas, skills, instincts, and preferences while staying responsive to the people around you. That responsiveness is one of the things I love most about making music with other people. Someone takes a song in an unexpected direction. A transition stretches longer than planned. Someone introduces an idea I never would have thought of. A mistake becomes part of the arrangement.
I might follow, offer another direction, or need a second to figure out what everyone else is doing. The music changes because other people are there, and I get to change in response without disappearing from the process.
That has helped me understand something about myself too. I want creative spaces where I can bring my own perspective without needing to control the outcome. I want room to respond rather than simply execute. I want to notice what I’m bringing, what others are bringing, and what might be needed in the moment. And I want connections where all of us can remain ourselves while making something together.
You Are Here
None of this gave me a grand answer about the summer. Music did not sit me down and politely explain what I should do next with my life. It also didn’t fix everything that was difficult. Rude, honestly.
What it did was help me notice more clearly what I wanted to stay connected to—and what I wanted more of. That is what I mean when I think of creativity as a map. A map doesn’t always have to tell us where we should go. Sometimes what we need is the little dot that says you are here.
Creative practice can offer those points of orientation without demanding that we immediately turn them into answers: This interests me. I want to stay with this. This feels difficult today. I need more space here. I want to take up more space here. This feels supportive. This feels alive. This feels like me.
I think this is part of why I work so hard to honour creativity as a driving force in my life. The arts are often treated as optional—something extra we get to after the important things are finished. But creative practice can give us opportunities to notice ourselves without requiring that we immediately improve, explain, or transform what we find. It can offer ways of experimenting with choice, listening, inhabiting the body, taking risks at a scale that feels possible, and being alongside other people while remaining connected to ourselves.
And sometimes, it simply gives us somewhere meaningful to put our attention for a while. For me, music helped me reconnect with parts of myself that had been less accessible while much of my attention was going toward rest and my health. It reminded me that I love being immersed in a process, shaping something slowly, listening to my body, and making things with people I care about.
None of those realizations need to become a five-year plan (somewhere a vision board is devastated), they are points of orientation. And right now, that feels like enough.
Sometimes creativity doesn’t show us where to go next; it only needs to help us find our way back to ourselves.
This is also part of the work I do at Sacred Circle Healing Arts Studio.
Through individual sessions, creative workshops and gatherings, I create space for reflection, curiosity, creative exploration, and reconnecting with yourself—without assuming there is one right way to do that.
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