My Soul Shall Always Reside In Art.

It was so obvious from the start.

Image by author. (MEEEE :) ) (text is تو کیوں نہ اب آزاد ہوں؟ (So why not be free now?))

This is for all of the people who get goosebumps when they listen to music. This is for all of the people who still don’t know why their minds stay stuck on that one painting. This is for the people who can “just” draw, no practice whatsoever, also for those who get that itch in their hands to paint This is for the people who get a line stuck in their heads and need to write it for the world to see.

You are seen, you are respected, you are cherished. Because I have been in every single one of these situations.

I, as of right now, am studying STEM majors for my A-levels. Not Arts, not Language, not Music. Instead it’s Maths, Computer Science and Physics.

I took a quite long break from writing because of my almost 2 months long exams, so it’s quite fitting that I write about my passions, my hobbies, “the places where my soul resides” (My soul has been homeless for 2 months😭)

I started writing poems when I was 9 years old, after I started to listen to music. My first audience were my classmates. Because I didn’t think I was good at writing, I didn’t tell anyone in my family at first. I did tell them later and the response was quite positive.

I’m almost 19 now, I still do not think my poems are quite fulfilling their potential yet, but I do have the courage to present my work to an audience, and face rejection in some ways too. Yet poetry will always remain the one thing that completes me, my companion and the only way i truly express myself.

I could always draw, I just knew that I could copy any image and when I was younger I would get frustrated trying to tell people how to do it, in my mind it was just “follow where the curves and lines go, and see how far they are apart”, and I was young enough for people to be astonished and say “Oh she’s talented.” When I turned 16 I wanted to paint, since I could draw, I figured it couldn’t be so hard. It was the bane of my existence, I just couldn’t get it, the blending, smudging, the mess, also how fast the paints dried while i was painting (acrylic paints iykyk)

When I was around 12, I wanted to learn to play guitar and piano, I have always found music to be amusing, even ethereal. I got so engaged to the point that I just kept reading about classical composers, and knew quite a lot about many composers, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff. I didn’t get a guitar, I did get a piano and ukulele. I learnt to play them just a little from youtube, never quite understanding the theory but could play just enough to impress an audience, before I eventually put those instruments away.

Then at 14, came crochet, it was quite tricky at first, but after about a hundred thousand stitches, I have gotten much better and make myself cardigans, sweaters, beanies, amigurumi. It is a long, annoyingly time consuming process, it has taught me to be patient and that not every yarn is the same (acrylic again, acrylic yarn is so uncomfortable to wear)

While doing or practising all these things I have always heard just one thing “Focus on your studies, these things will come and go, exams will not”.

And I obviously kept my mind on my studies all the time rather than spend time on my hobbies because getting 1st position in 8th grade has completed my life’s purpose.

While I am obviously joking about the 8th grade thing, I am not joking about leaving my hobbies. I do not do anything other than studying during the academic year and nor do I do anything other than my hobbies in summer break.

I do understand where the advice was coming from however, I always have and even if it was annoying it was never pointless. My parents didn’t dislike my passions, they disliked the idea of me not succeeding in life, I will always agree with that.

I don’t mind studying, but I do mind it when it tries to blend into other parts of my life outside the classroom, so if I ever decided to study arts, language, or music academically, it would inevitably make me hate them and I would never see them beyond studies and a burden.

But since I study STEM majors, I see the beauty in them, the type of beauty I see in art, just different. I am mesmerised by how white light can be bent to create colors. I am surprised when I find out how everything can be mapped out on a graph. I feel blessed to know how the machines around me work. I am thrilled by how we have replicated something that only happens in the stars. I am hopeful for the future by how far we have come with such advanced robotics.

Everything in my life stems from the idea that we’re not here forever, and regardless of the fact that we have one body, we can live for multiple lifetimes.

-S.A.K.