sol.ace_r

I still ask myself from time to time why I write songs.
Is it to be heard by someone, or simply to endure?
That question never brings me a clear answer.
It only keeps pointing in the same direction.
Will this song reach someone?
Will it help them?
Is it better to listen to it after crying, or just before the tears come?
Those thoughts drift on, and at some point, return to me.

I don’t write because I’m exhausted.
If I were truly depleted, I wouldn’t even have the strength to hold on to anything.
Rather, I write songs when I want to touch the original reason once more—
to check whether the reason I started,
and the reason I still haven’t let go,
is still alive.

After getting through a day, things remain that are too light to put into words,
yet too heavy to leave untouched.
Feelings that can’t be explained,
greetings I couldn’t give to anyone,
emotional residue left at the end of the day.
They linger somewhere inside me, unarranged,
and sometimes make it hard to breathe.

I used to try to explain those feelings somehow.
Why I was struggling, what was wrong, where it all began to go astray.
But the more I tried to explain, the heavier my heart became,
and the words wore out before I did.
So at some point, I made a small promise to myself:
even if the world doesn’t understand,
at least I won’t deny these feelings.

The least painful way to keep that promise, for me, was music.
A language that doesn’t require explanation.
A way to leave emotions as sound when words can’t reach them.
Perhaps that was why music had to stay beside me as I endured each day.

That’s why I didn’t want to write songs for careless reasons.
I didn’t want to fill the future with music layered with empty words.
There were things that grew smaller when explained,
things that wore down once reasons were attached to them.
Emotions that linger quietly
between joy and sorrow,
between saying “I’m okay” and confessing that I’m not.
That ambiguous place was where I had stood the longest.

When turned into sentences, my feelings became too sharp.
When left unsaid, being alone stretched on too long.
So songs felt like a third option, placed between speech and silence.
Not to live well, but to avoid falling apart.
Not to blend into the world, but to avoid losing myself.

I’m not good with words.
My words are always a beat late,
my explanations often miss their mark.
And silence—how easily it turns into misunderstanding.
So the things I couldn’t say in words flowed into songs instead.
Not as grand comfort for someone,
but simply as a way of staying nearby.

“You’re not the only one.”
“You’re not alone.”
“It’s okay not to be okay.”
These sentences may look like words written for someone else,
but in truth, they were the words I most wanted to hear myself.
Words no one had said to me,
so I wanted to say them at least to myself.

I wrote those sentences down,
and for a while, did nothing else.
I didn’t reach a conclusion.
I didn’t decide to make music again.
I just left them there.
It felt like those words were enduring in my place for a while.

Strangely, after that, sounds began to come first.
Not words, not explanations—
just melodies with no clear destination.
They felt like they would disappear if I didn’t reach out,
so I extended my hand, just a little.

To call that the beginning would be too loud.
To call it music would be too much.
I didn’t think about trying again,
and I certainly didn’t want to do well.
There were simply emotions I could no longer handle with words,
and they needed somewhere to exist.
That place happened to be music.

At first, I hesitated.
Why was I holding onto this again?
Was I just forcing meaning onto it?
Whenever those thoughts came, I chose not to explain.
The moment I explained, the feeling might shrink.
I had already lost my heart many times through explanation.

So in front of music, I tried not to attach anything—
no goals, no reasons, no outcomes.
There were more days when I stopped and thought,
“Today, this is enough.”
That was the closest thing to restarting, for me.

Looking back, it feels less like I chose music again
and more like the other options quietly disappeared.
There were already too many words,
silence had grown too long,
and explanations kept going astray.
In between, sound was the only thing left untouched.

So this beginning didn’t need to be shown to anyone.
It didn’t matter if no one understood or acknowledged it.
This wasn’t a result—it was closer to a process,
a reason kept only for myself.

I keep returning to the questions I wrote at the start of this piece.
Will this song reach someone?
Will it help them?
After crying, or just before?
I still don’t know.
But at least I no longer deny the reason
I keep stepping back toward music with those questions in my hands.

So I’m still writing songs.
Not to become something,
but so I don’t disappear.
To tell myself that the feelings I couldn’t leave in words
are still here.

I don’t know how far this beginning will go.
The word “completion” may never quite fit.
That’s fine.
The original reason hasn’t vanished,
and I’m still holding onto that hand.