I learned to play guitar by feel for a long time. By the time I had my first lesson I had already been playing for about 1.5 years. I asked about the modes and chords and the really hard stuff that I couldn't understand at that point. All in all I think I only had lessons for about one year in total.

I have now been playing for 7.5-8 years now, and I have thoroughly enjoyed every second of it. It has always felt, and will most likely continue to be, a deeply personal kind of freedom for me. People have always teased me and taunted me and even bullied me because I'm different, being the last person picked in groups and even being doggedly ignored when many people were forming them is nothing new to me. Because of this I withdrew from a lot of social scenarios because of what I can only describe as a pure sense of dissappointment in the poeple I was presented with more often than not.

Music is different.

In music, there is the inherent ability to take any feeling that I possess and give it a tangable force to be heard; sometimes that message has to be shouted, and sometimes it has to be whispered. Regardless of how we choose to write our music, what cannot be ignored is the fact that it will always have our own personal stamp, an unconcious mark to say that this was what we created, and that can now be heard virtually anywhere on the planet. Whatever the words may be, through music we can speak them more articulately than any world leader, more inspiringly than any artist, and give it the sheer presence and lasting impact of the legends that inspired us to first pick up our instruments.

We are musicians.

We are the people who give thousands the morale strength to see another day through.

We are the ones who create the backdrop to people's childhoods, from games to films to concerts and to lullabyes.

We are an undeniable voice that can literally change people's lives for the better if we make good use of what we can do.

Nothing is impossible unless you allow it to be.