Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side.
The bass strums lightly, accompanied by the tapping of drums. I raise my trumpet to my lips, close my eyes, and enter another world- one more pure, true, and uniquely mine. I am no longer a high school student worrying about physics; I am Freddie Hubbard blowing over the changes of Cherokee. All the scales I labored over in master classes suddenly become second nature. I play.
Music is my elixir. It transforms dull hours into golden ones. Nothing is more exciting than an improvised solo in front of hundreds of people, a composition of my own, or even a simple improvised jingle. Although I constantly study difficult theory, I always try to compose and invent with my emotions as opposed to musical conventions.
There was a moment during Stanford Jazz Camp, when we were alone in a room and told to make music. We confusedly looked around for instruments, when I realized that everything in the room could be used as an instrument. I triumphantly seized my folding chair and played a rumba clave, a traditional Latin rhythm, by tapping it on the floor. My peers joined in, grabbing objects varying from a backpack zipper to the large textbooks kept on the shelves. Through this experience, I realized that music is more than a collection of 13 different notes, it is a language of many words that I can craft to convey my thoughts and feelings.
Music allows me to express my creative side in a way that nothing else can. I have complete control over what keys I strike or what notes rise from my horn. When playing classics like Charlie Parker’s Anthropology or drumming my fingers on my dashboard to AC/DC, I forget routine matters and wholly immerse myself in melody. When struggling with physics projects, my revelations come with a ukulele, not a pencil, in my hand. Music is a vehicle to relax, to create, to grow, and to express, and it will always be a part of me.