Music has always been said to be a universal language, but I don’t agree. Music has as many meanings as people who listen to it. What for us can be a sad melody, for someone from the other side of the world, it can be the happiest of songs, that’s why I refuse to believe that music is universal. However, I don’t think this is a problem, but an advantage to be able to communicate with ourselves. Art shows us the reality that we need to see.
Listen to the track while reading the text.
My name’s Irene Sánchez Fernández, and I’m from Spain. At present, I’m 22 years old, I’ve just finished a musicology degree, and I’m trying to open my way to become a true artist.
My interest in music started when I was very young, despite not coming from a family of musicians. I’ve always been a sad and anxious person. I haven’t experienced any tragedy; my life hasn’t been horrible. I haven’t had any problems that none of you could have had. I’m just like that. I guess I’m a very sensitive person, and there comes the point where you feel so overwhelmed by emotions that you stop feeling something at all.
When I was a child, I loved listening to music because I felt identified with it, and that comforted me. But as I became a teen, I couldn’t identify with any song because I couldn’t identify with anything. I felt empty and disconnected from reality, and that’s when I started to compose my own songs.
Music helped me understand myself and expose all those emotions that had been hidden behind depersonalization. Besides, it helped me find a healthy way out when I could no longer bear the reality I was rediscovering.
Nowadays, I continue writing about how I feel (although many times I’m not aware of my feelings until I punt them into a music sheet), but I try to go beyond a simple description. With my music, I don’t only want to find my emotions, but also the reason for these. As I’ve already said, my life has never been especially difficult, actually, I consider myself someone privileged, but my head can’t help asking a thousand questions:
What is love?
Why does it exist?
Why do we exist?
What is the meaning of our existence?…
All these doubts lead me to the conclusion that our life, and everything that surrounds it, is a nonsense that we live only by inertia. This emptiness is what keeps me away from happiness and it’s also the main topic of most of my songs. The emptiness in life, the emptiness of love, the emptiness of pain, the emptiness of destiny…
On the other hand, I also like to compose instrumental pieces that evoke certain scenarios or emotions. With them I do not intend to discover anything, but to create it. They are a medicine of a few minutes that helps me alleviate the pain that my own mind causes me.
I’m aware that all of this may sound a bit dramatic, but the point is that everything you’ve read is just what music means to me. All the songs I compose are a tool to be aware of my own emotions and to be able to deal with them. But, maybe, one day you’ll listen to them and they’ll mean something completely different for you, and it won’t be wrong. For this reason, music is not a universal language, but a way of connecting with ourselves.
In the end, our interpretation of art is only a reflection of our mind.
(Finally, I’d like to apologize if I’ve made any mistake. I understand English without problems, but I’m not used to expressing myself in that language. I hope you’ve enjoyed the post!)
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