My Composition
by Lily Hatwell
15-18 years | 2nd Place
Surrounded by these masses of people, I have never felt more alone. Never felt more out of tune. The chaotic noises clash against my ears as I step outside – the inconsistent beats of footsteps on the footpath, dissonant wailing of sirens, voices rising and falling in a language I cannot follow. The street pulses with urgency, pushing the tempo forward. I move out of time, a misplaced note in the composition of life. Despite the physical closeness of those around me, I feel as though I am still held at a distance, an invisible barrier preventing my words from being understood. This volume, this chaos – it can’t quite find harmony. As I continue along these unfamiliar paths, I imagine the concrete pavements of the city to be the lush grass of another place – quieter roads, crisp air, and a whisper in the trees that is perfectly in tune.
I return to what was given to me a long time before I could comprehend its significance. Music was never something that I chose; I inherited it just as I did my mother’s eyes and my father’s humour. Both of them being musicians, I grew up in a house enveloped with harmony, Sound waves chasing me down hallways and embracing me as my eyes drifted shut at night. Music became our primary language, a way to communicate feelings we couldn’t verbalise – to congratulate us on our successes and comfort us after our losses. I didn’t realise during my childhood that this language was not just a hobby, but a way to survive challenge.
As I grew, I spent my time in theatres, in rehearsal rooms, chasing the Sound waves just as they had chased me when I was younger. I played with other students like me, coming together in annual celebrations of our connection. We understood each other through not just our belonging to this place, but belonging to the music reverberating in the theatre – this theatre that embraces the diversity of this community, its clock tower keeping everyone in time, never missing a beat.
While words, dialects and scripts belong to borders, music does not ask for translation. These Sound waves traverse mountains, seas and skies with no need for a map. They are never lost; always home. When I am faced with discomfort, faced with obstacles, I reach for those Waves, those melodies. The music offers me quiet reassurance even when I cannot understand the world around me. It reminds me of home.
As I walk into the rehearsal room, I am brought back to my body, in a new land, far from the sounds of my memories. Instruments murmur as I take my seat at the piano, fingertips hovering above keys that I know so well. As I make contact with the cool ivory, a Sound wave pierces the silence. Suddenly, the room is alive. Emotions pour out through my fingers, translating to Sound waves that bounce off of every corner in the room. They weave through the bodies, interweaving to create one cohesive melody. These Waves, they cross the invisible borders, building a bridge between the souls of everyone in the room. I become an interpreter for my thoughts, translating feeling to vibration, emotion into motion. I do not need my voice to understand the pain of the violinist across from me.
I do not need a shared vocabulary to feel the drummer's excitement. The bridges of the Sound waves, they connect us where language has failed. Here, we do not belong to a border or a nation, we belong to the rhythm, to the heart of the music pulsing around us. We all form this harmony together, as one.
The final chord resonates around the room, gradually fading to silence, yet somehow it lingers – suspended in the room, a ghost of the Waves that just connected us. The air has changed, somehow; a sense of mutual understanding has filled the atmosphere. Even in this silence, this stillness, I can still feel the lasting harmonies that will fill my head long after I leave this room. While this piano before me may be laid out into ordered groups, black and white separated across a keyboard, the listener cannot distinguish each individual note – they only remember the sound of the harmony, of all the keys working together as one. This shift in the atmosphere is reflected within me, too. The foreign nature of the city outside hasn’t changed, yet I have begun to understand how to find comfort and exist within it. Music hasn’t replaced the country I left behind, but expanded my perception of where I belong and what I consider to be ‘home’.
Outside, I am again met with restless noise. Cars rush past. Conversations overlap. Unfamiliar words still drift by. However something has changed. The sounds no longer feel entirely dissonant; I can make out the beginnings of a chord, the skeleton of harmony. As I walk, I notice the rhythm of my steps beginning to fall into time with the pulse of this new concrete street. Music has taught me how to step forward, to take on a challenge as opposed to retreating to what is comfortable. The sound that I created moments ago still lingers around me, paving a route through the uncertainty that lies ahead. Each note guides me toward a sense of belonging in a place that once felt entirely unreachable. This state of being an outsider – it starts to weigh me down less. Because no matter where I go, no matter the song of a new city, there will always be an invisible string of sound that connects me to the theatre, to music. To home.