Time to head home - The awakening

Since moving to a different town, in a different county no less than a four-hour drive to my original home in Nottinghamshire, it got me thinking of how fortunate I was to live in the city of Nottingham (or as close to it as I was before).

The first morning of my move to the small town of Yeovil, Somerset, I woke up to nothing but air and silence and thought to myself, "Where am I? Where's the sound? Where's the screaming of arguments, the laughing of the neighbors? Where did it go?" I came to find out that Somerset was as far away from that interaction as possible. I was livid. During my time in the town, I grew to understand that Yeovil was so out of touch with itself and had fallen on hard times, "All thanks to COVID!" as the elders used to say to me. "Give it a couple of years and this town will end up as a ghost town!" This made me crack up because I thought "that was what I thought Mansfield was going to end up as." once upon a time at the age of 14.

I never understood why I hated my home town of Mansfield and Nottingham so much, now that I was working in Yeovil and trying to make a name for myself... It took me a couple of years to see that I grew with amazing people. Sure, there were times that I hated Yeovil, with nothing better to do but to travel an hour or so anywhere to get to a place that temporarily gave me a fix of the city life like Bristol did, but nothing was ever permanent. I didn't feel like the city was my city... it was just a noisy and crowded place just like Nottingham was, but it wasn't the right kind of noise.

So what made yeovil so tolerable for a time?

At first, it was the newfound friendship, both out of work and in work. I felt like the noise at the YMCA kept me busy for a time, the hustle and bustle, the excitement to help young people move in and kick-start their lives into their new independent chapter was the highlight of my work. It felt as if it wasn't work at all; rather, it was more like attending a house and helping others.

However, the noise soon turned into a dull hum, and day in - day out - I was experiencing the norm of someone who had lost touch with what the noise meant to them. When the noise faded, I wasn't me. I was losing my drive, my sense of passion with singing and music, my yearning for that simple noise of life.

In my original fight or flight response, I eventually moved back up to Nottinghamshire for a month to find that missing part of me. However, that lead to me chasing it all the way back to Yeovil. Maybe I was wrong about Yeovil? Maybe I was being too harsh.

But as I settled back to Yeovil after a month of being away, something was still missing.

Then it hit me.

it wasn't the noise of the city that I was craving, but the sound of life. My aura. My music.

It was like something woke up within my heart, and I sat with a few of my close people at work and home and discussed my frustrations, and their insight and advice made me feel that spark I lost so long ago. It was igniting; it felt perfect. So naturally, I picked up that drive to apply for my postgraduate course... and it all pointed to one place. My home.

Finally, I can find my way, like a bird flying back to its nest. And now here I am, attending Nottingham Trent University, studying Music Business at the London campus whilst living in Nottingham.

I've been in Nottingham for almost a month (gosh, has it been almost a month already?) and I can safely say, the noise, the music, the adventure in me sparked again. I felt everything melt away and I am now finally finding my feet. But where do I step? Where can I go with this?

The point I'm trying to make is that my life was and always will be about the noise. Not the place, not the people I surrounded myself with (even though they were fantastic people and I could not ask for better), and not the simplicity of the noise of city living; it's the noise within me. Once the spark ignited into the original flame, I could hear my sound, my voice, my instruments again. Whatever I do within this year of my postgraduate course, I know now that as long as I have that noise within me, I will never be lost again.

Now, it's time for me to bring that noise to others, to help them take that first step, to follow the noise within them that's screaming for them to go for their dreams within the music industry, no matter which path they choose.

:)

"Adventure must start with running away from home." – William Bolitho