Stop Trying to Be Remembered

Kalondu Kisila
ZORA
Published in
3 min readMar 14, 2022

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A cool picture my brother took that does not in any way correlate with this post.

When I was young, I was an avid Disney channel consumer. Even though I had no connection to American culture, I loved the shows and often fought with my brother when he preferred to watch football over Hannah Montana. Most importantly, my love for Disney birthed an unexpected interest that I would carry into my teen years. Writing songs.

If you watched Disney in the late 2000s to early 2010s, you probably remember the classic singer-songwriter trope. The actors would randomly break out into song. Conveniently, some background music would appear to support their cathartic performances. It was a rather odd concept but I still ate that shit up.

I walked around the house singing lyrics accompanied by imaginary backing tracks that encompassed pop music at the time. I scheduled shows where I forced my family to sit through my improvised songs. And although these were all signs of acute psychosis, I enjoyed these moments very much. Writing songs became the only way I could express myself. I hoped to be a big star someday and I strongly believed this was my calling, my purpose, my ultimate legacy!

Obviously, this did not happen. Yet, I still continue to write songs for myself and those close to me. The ultimate question is, why write songs or pick up any hobby even though you’re not going to be the best at it? Why invest energy into something you love…

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