Comptine d'un autre été

I am a collector of songs. I collect music and forge it with memory to move me to different times and places in my life, to journey to moments that I hardly remember have passed, to forsee others that have not yet come. There is something profound about this work of collecting. Within the span of several minutes I can relive my deepest experiences of elation or sadness. Collecting songs allows me to plunge within my own being.

One song in my collection is the "Comptine d'un autre été" from the movie Amélie. Last September it was my swan song of departure, my ode of contemplation. I played it as I packed my suitcases and prepared to leave home. I played it again last week as I packed yet again three suitcases: two for Paris, one for Saint-Barths. It is, as the title promises, the song of another summer.

I play this simple melody now as I sit sheltered from tropical rain and compose. Music inspires me infallibly. It moves to contemplation and composition. If only it could help me to unearth the story buried within me. There is a creator within me, and she's never left even though I have--at times--abandoned her. I'm struggling to get to know her again.

I used to be fearless and could talk to the creator within me all the time. I fearlessly brandished pens and notebooks as a young teenager, delved into my own realm and just composed. Then I went to high school and she slipped a bit more. And then I went to college and she slipped away.

I am afraid of the blank page now. I am afraid of it because I fear I have nothing worthy of saying. I am afraid that each word I place in front of another will sound ridiculous and cumbersome. I am afraid that I have no interesting stories to tell.

I am afraid that fear is a useless emotion for my purposes.

Perhaps the fear of the blank page is my quarter life calamity, an adults-only disease that plagues me because I was raised in a culture that largely values cheap spectacle over refinement and sports over Shakespeare, a culture that associates refinement and education with elitist snobbery. Maybe this is why I'm fleeing with all my might to the ivory tower and above all, to France, where the writer is a near religious figure and a privileged intellectual.

I'm on my knees praying that France will solve my writer's block calamity, that it will galvanize all that is within me.

We will see in another summer's time.