Thoughts on Light From Uncommon Stars (and learning about the existence of quarter tones)

I was taught an incomplete and facile scale,

taught the music of white men,

of geniuses among the proud mediocre.

I was taught the harmonies of the common,

my ear, educated into a kind of deafness

from the moment I first heard music.

I was not told about quarter tones,

liminal spaces, the in between.

I was not shown this scale so thick with notes,

so dense with sound and quality.

I was not taught to stay in dissonance,

to tune my strings there and play.

I was not told my music could be given

to those I do not trust,

to those I do not forgive,

to those who do not listen.

I was taught to only play in the silence of sterile anticipation

to perform, to count, to parrot.

I was never told to play

from the noisy rooms of my self,

never told to carry this instrument there,

to ask it to play the music of my own hollows,

the music of my own hurt and healing,

the music that only I can write and only you can hear.