my photography

Several times in the last several months, I have been asked the question "how come you don't do photography anymore?". Though I tried to search for an answer, my mind could never come up with something adequate. This week, being buried underneath a musical avalanche, which, at most times, is the only kind of avalanche I'd like to be buried under, I realized something: music is my photography.
     Before, when music and I had been only briefly acquainted and were still getting to know each other, I felt as if music was something that I needed to play. It was an expression of myself, a way to let out how I felt, something I wanted to remember, something I wanted others to remember. It was just a means to record thoughts and feelings. It was a fun, but only a means to an end.
     Now that music and I have gotten to know each other a little better, my thoughts on it are completely different. Music is no longer an expression, it is a necessary side effect of everything I do. I can't walk without rhythm, I can't speak without a melody line, I can't listen to someone speak without hearing it in the midst of the worlds song. Tapping feet, notes in class, chalkboards, sighs, credit cards, scooting chairs, cars, construction work; this is the song I hear every day. I don't play music to express myself, I live and it is forced into music. I cannot help it. It is my fifth limb, a part of my body. It is not something on the outside; no, not even something on the inside; rather it IS my outside and my inside. It is my throat, it is my ears, it is my water, my mind's photograph. It is the way that I survive. It is my deepest conversation with God, and His deepest conversation with me.
     I didn't stop photographing because I didn't like it, or even because I had a choice between it and music. I stop photography because the click of the shutter, the sound of the wind, the gadgets moving and beeps of the camera; these were more about music to me, about musical value, than they were about the picture itself.
Music is my photography.