When I was seven years old, my dream was to publish my own book. At the time, I was addicted to making my own picture books from the kits sold at the Lakeshore Learning Store. I would eagerly draw the illustrations in crayon and write the story myself. Now, at fifteen years old, my love for writing has only grown. To me, writing is like building a refuge, building a secret castle so large that you can hide inside and daydream for hours. When the world seems to shatter, and the sky is about to fall, more often than not, I turn to my castle, and let its walls envelop me like a warm blanket. Each time I pull open the door to the castle, panting and out of breath, I’m presented with a different wonderland. When I’m banging on the castle walls to hurry and swallow me up as a thunderstorm follows in my wake, I’m thrust down a rabbit hole speckled with stars as my pen sings of dreams, tears made of mermaid pearls, and cupping shooting stars in trembling palms. My fingers slowly twirl the pen, its hypnotizing siren song soothing the throbbing thunder in my temples. When I tap on the french window of my gleaming castle as the sun beams behind me, my pen puffs out sucrose yellow birds softer than cotton candy as I write about a boy who falls in love with talking to the clouds. To me, writing has become my oasis and my sanctuary.
Besides writing books and stories, I also fell in love with the art of poetry. As a pianist, I like to say that poetry is the music of words. Poetry is a river of flowing melodies that paints sunsets and the outstretched wings of frail great blue herons. Often, when I sit on the sunny veranda of my secret castle, a piano piece sparks a passion in me, urging me to release a stream of silvery words from my fingertips onto paper. I wrote Reflets dans L’eau with Debussy’s Reflections in the Water in mind, dreaming of Monet’s Water Lilies, and “shadows flickering, dancing on the shimmering pond, like a ballerina” (Reflets dans L’eau). I wrote of the swan, “dipping its vast, magnificent feathers into the flushed hues of strawberry lemonade” (Le Cygne) while hearing the warm, caramel melody of Le Cygne, by Saint-Saens. If writing is my oasis, then music is the sweet, earthy wind that ripples the palm trees, poetry is the shy, budding flowers sprinkled along the banks, and words are the bubbling spring that nourishes, heals, and entices you to come closer to its surface.
(Echo and Narcissus - John William Waterhouse)
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