For my fiftieth, the gift of learning a new language with which I’ve always been in love – music.

Oud, when I was younger, as it’s the melody of ancestors and family; fabric woven through our daily lives from morning coffee to the evening’s sweet mint tea. Coffee shops in tight and cobbled souq streets always rang with the sound of oud. They still do if you know where to listen.

My world. It is a home smelling of burnt sage, clove and cinnamon lips, and allspice tongues. It is velvet and silk robes covering delicate wrists and full hearts. My world is extraordinary, and it is lush and luxurious and it is all peace no matter the external experience. Music is one of the threads holding everything in place, loose enough to let it expand and contract, shift and remain still as needed.

I am better than I imagined, and I am even better than this according to my teacher, who’s been in this particular symphony for over 35 years.

Something has shifted since I began. Every time I sit with my guitar, whom I’ve named Clove, my mind quiets. Every anxious wave is calmed, every wound is healed, every sharp edge softened. I’ve never experienced this before, except through dhikr.

Perhaps music is a love language of Allah. It’s certainly one of mine, because I send songs to friends as hugs and kisses and boops, and I’ll take a well thought-out mixed tape with the right lyrics as a gift before I’d ever want flowers and chocolates.

Though I don’t intend to be, though it can be misread and misunderstood, though, though, though, I am certainly mercurial. What turned me explosive formerly is now the same reason(s) for reflection, quiet, and growth. To the greatest extent possible, I no longer allow myself to be reactive about personal things. When I have failed, Allah has provided me with enough suttor allowing me to recover without harming anyone but myself. In Islam, repeatedly throughout the Qur’an, we are instructed that to put down the anger, to never act or speak from a place of anger, Allah will increase us in compassion. Psychology now confirms this very thing.

In time,  this shift which I have been making for over a year, it will be second-hand nature, so that I might not even harm myself.

But the mercury. Man, the mercury it is always there beneath the surface waiting in the event it’s required.

Neither flight nor freeze. I am all fight, and I do not resign myself to anything. The mercury helps in such moments.

Guitar has proven to be the peace where the mercury might otherwise show itself. I wish I had known this sooner.

Music has always been a healer. There is never a time when music isn’t playing in my home – it’s the first thing I do as soon as I complete morning prayers. It’s the first thing I put on when home after work for my dance party. I’d rather music than television; it works my imagination better than anything else. I just never considered that making it might itself be a balm.

A friend once said “I never feel lonely when I have a guitar.”

Guitar, then, it is a love story.

To never feel lonely. Also, it is proving transformative, another layer to a right love story. If we are the same person after we have loved and been loved, we did not do either enough.

Guitar, then, it is a great love story.

“I never feel alone when…”

Guitar. Guitar!

I have found my alchemy in non-human form. What a trip.

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