Spyret's Blog

If music be the food of love, play on!

Today’s song is a MAJOR spoiler for DELTARUNE Chapter 5, and it’s… very gutsy. I didn’t know I’d be trying to play this song, especially not just for one of my blog posts, but I think it’s worth it to send it out. I’m very proud of it. And doing this song for today made me confident that music was the thing I wanted to talk about. But it won’t loop, so if you want to listen to it all the way through, you can sit at this paragraph for a while and hear mine and Miku’s dulcet tones.

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… (sips dr peppter)

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…okay, we good? Let’s move on!

So, in my about page, I mention that I’ve been playing piano for fourteen years. Honestly, it’s closer to fifteen now… which is an extreme number, considering I’m turning 19 next month. But, it’s true! I’ve been hitting the keys since I could reach them. (Is it weird to say I’m hitting the keys?) (Why would we hit her? I would rather not hit her. I’d rather hug and kiss her and love her.)

Now, I’ve also been able to read since I was two, so about that same age. I’ve had hyperlexia all my life, and my reading level has always been disproportionately high. I want you to imagine a preschooler with buck teeth and a bob reading the Boxcar Children… maybe don’t. That’s not good for your health. All this to say, my reading abilities fell extremely short any time I looked at a page of sheet music.

They are not words, sadly. Words are my strong suit. I’ve failed many a math class, I’ve barely passed science… how am I supposed to read dots and lines on longer dots and lines? Any time it’s been explained to me, it just went one ear and out the other. I did take lessons once to help with this, but nobody thought it was cool that I played songs on my own without ever reading how to do it. I just listened to songs.

After my teachers didn’t like me and kicked me out, I realized it was totally fine to learn my own way. I was six years old when I sat down and picked out a couple songs from my little kiddie toy radio, like Silent Night, and Skip to my Lou… weird one… and I got quickly attached to the instrument. It gave me stimulation I used to only get from eating dirt. And I was a restless child (I’d only get diagnosed with ADHD maybe four years later) so I needed stimulation like that. It made me happy, too, hearing music go right. I started noticing how emotional I’d get when I was listening to music. When I watched How To Train Your Dragon for the first time, I cried listening to Test Drive, and that motivated me to learn it on the piano.

Life went this way until I was 12. You can see where this is going.

How I reacted to UNDERTALE is a story for its own post, but the music is a big part of why it struck such a chord with me. I realized the importance of motifs, making someone feel with a song, the connection of music to its story… again. This is its own post. I first ran to my piano to play Once Upon a Time.

It was a simple one to learn, maybe one of the easiest in the whole soundtrack, but it made me very happy. I’d learned songs from my favorite movies and shows, but to play a song from UNDERTALE, the first piece of media that ever taught me something, and inspired me in so many ways, made me feel like I was a part of the music. Playing it made me feel connected in another way, not just playing the game. Nowadays, I can play more than 20 UTDR songs on piano.

When I was fourteen, I stopped being able to play piano. Sad, I know! That’s a story with many layers you’re probably never going to hear in its entirety! But the depression I was already in became infinitely worse, because I was staring at the upright piano in my living room every day, unable to even get up and play a song. It hurt really bad. And it still hurts thinking about it. I thought I’d never be able to play a song again.

…well, as soon as I was able to step back into it, about a year later, I walked myself through being able to play Undertale again. The six-minute song, one of the most emotional in the soundtrack, a thesis of hope. Finally on my fingertips again.

You see what I’m getting at. There are so many more stories I could tell about music being this important to me. You’ll never know how serious this was to me, probably because I’m never going to tell you, but I was still struggling to pull through all of this when…

…when Toby Fox, the creator of my favorite game, someone whose story brought me so much hope, sent me something interesting in a newsletter.

“There’s times where it feels like your hopes and dreams are simply slipping away from you. That the things you wanted to achieve are floating away from you in the sky while you lie there, fallen in a crater, your wing torn off, never to grow back. Bitterness grows, and you feel like you may never leave the ground again.

But

That’s not true.

You can still fly.

That’s what this song is about.

Just before the intense part of the song, there’s whispering. These are like the magic words that let you do anything. And as long as you say them you cannot lose.

Even if you lose a piece of yourself, even if it feels like you can’t get up anymore, you can. You can fly with one wing. You can fly without any wings.

So, keep singing.

Keep singing.“

…don’t look at me. I’m not crying.

So, if you ever wonder, “why’s Spyret always writing music for the start of their posts? Don’t they ever stop?”

No. Not really. I know how it feels to stop. I’m not made to stop when it comes to music, and I know how it feels to be forced to. Music is my language, how I express love, how I tell you I love you and I want you to feel these things with me. And as long as I share these songs with you, it feels like we’re playing together.

And if you ever feel stuck, if you lose parts of yourself, if you’re so deep in the pits that you feel like you can never do what you love again,

I’m with you, and I know you can. Keep singing, okay?

And I hope when you hear my songs, you hear the love in them. It’s for you.

Until next time. ❤