Liberating Beats Anonymous

Before I open my laptop I can hear it. Every beat, every base drop comes to life faster than my hands can sort it into sound. Melodies weave together and I can tell the stuffed animals on my shelf are in for a show. Now in the headspace to create, I finally open my laptop and wait for the black screen to wake so I can come alive.

Yes or no, true or false, black or white.

I always seemed to gravitate towards a systematic way of thinking. In nearly all of my pursuits, I cling to calculations in order to make sense of the world around me and to establish predictability. Whether it be in school or soccer, I have rarely been one to stray from instructions. I developed a sense of security in thinking in “if ...then” statements. If I measure half a cup of pancake mix into the batter each morning the pancakes will never come out too thin; if I say “have a good one” to each customer that leaves the restaurant I work in, I won’t come off as a pre-recording nor overly casual.

Around junior year something changed. I’m not really sure what happened. Maybe it was restlessness or a realization of how tiresome and boring this safety net was becoming. In retrospect, I now see that the non-linear part of me did not want to fear the next creative...