Videos: Happy Persian New Year Norooz + Music’s Magic by Elseebub

The more the merrier, so let’s celebrate together! Happy Persian New Year, a.k.a. Norooz, which is a non-religious holiday! And happy Spring, which here in Los Angeles is off to glorious start! Celebrations are my turn-of-the-page antidotes to hard times. I wish you a happy today and that all your tomorrows are filled with hope.

Here’s a speech that explains Nowrooz, which I performed when I was a member of Toastmasters…

Today’s guest blog post comes by way of Elseebub, a muscian in Gothenburg, Sweden. She writes, “I’ve lived here all my life except, for when I was about two to five years old, when my parents worked in the US. I learned English at daycare in Seattle, started rhyming immediately, and english has always been my poetry-language.” Connect with her at @elseebub on X and Instagram, and listen to her songs at Spotify. Click here for “Spirit” and here for “Please Mr Mengele.”

“Poetry sung. The magic of music.” by Elseebub

I tried a lot of hobby’s as a child but nothing really stuck. Trying to find what I was supposed to do.  I was close when I tried the cello when I was eight, I felt that music was what I was meant for, I even started experimenting with my own melodies although I was merely a beginner but for whatever reason I stopped. I grew. I read Harry Potter slavishly when they came and fantasized, like most, about having magic powers. As I started puberty school was rough. I wasn’t like other kids. I had fears and I had ideas that didn’t fit. Always did I scribble poetry and stuff but only to myself, trying to make sense of things.

Enter: the guitar. When I was twelve or thirteen I learned a few chords, that’s all it took and I realized that my voice could do the rest. Suddenly I had magic powers. All the poetry, the pain, the anger, the confusion and also the love could be (loudly) declared as strummed, almost beat the guitar. From that moment on that’s what I did. I went through many stages of confusion and heartache as I was turning into a woman and indeed long into adulthood. Many times I was hospitalized. Always did I have my guitar. Throughout it all I perfected my skill to write, to rhyme, to find melodies and to sing.

2018 I released an album with a lovely producer I knew through my uncle, who was so proud of my music but sadly passed 2011. This album, Flesh & Bone, had been building for a long time. The oldest song, Under Your Skin, I wrote when I was 14. It’s about a grooming relationship I had with an older man at that time, and boy did I view the lyrics differently when I sang it in the studio from when I wrote it all those years ago. But both when I wrote it and when I recorded it I felt powerful.

That’s truly the magic of music; the power. To be able to take pain, anger and even shame, make it rhyme and make it yours to shout from the rooftops. Nobody can interject.

After the album was released I continued working with that producer for a while and with him I recorded Counting Blessings, a song I wrote during a peculiar time in 2020. As I was writing it, every day felt like a big day, like I was invited to a fancy party but the party never came to pass. It was just me and my dog making a ruckus in my small apartment. But it felt big, it felt divine. The song is basically my advice to myself and others when life seems pointless or cruel and it is still one of my favorites.

“The only time that’s wasted is time you take to contemplate time you

should have spent differently.

I count my losses and my blessings simultaneously because they’re what

makes me me.

The only way of moving forward is letting go of the past but keep your

traumas as souvenirs.

Why? Because, you know, it’s when you’re screaming that you really

breathe, in heart and soul you are free.”

How do you stay joyful?