←

Poetry by Rowan Evans

Tag: music and memory

  • Let Shuffle Steer | A Poem About Music, Emotion & Self-Discovery

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    Some people use shuffle as background noise.

    I use it as a compass.

    I’ve noticed over the years that when I stop trying to control what song comes next and simply let the algorithm decide, the music often mirrors something I was already feeling—or something I hadn’t admitted I was feeling yet.

    One song can pull me inward. Another can make me laugh. Another can unlock a memory I hadn’t thought about in years. It’s less about the songs themselves and more about how music has always been one of the languages my mind speaks most fluently.

    This poem isn’t really about playlists.

    It’s about trust.

    Trusting art to take me somewhere I didn’t expect to go, and accepting that sometimes the best way to understand myself is to stop choosing the destination and simply listen.

    — Rowan Evans

    A person wearing headphones sits beneath a night sky as glowing soundwaves wrap around them like a chrysalis, transforming into butterflies while surreal landscapes fade into one another.
    Sometimes the best guide isn’t a map—it’s the next song that shuffle decides you need.

    Let Shuffle Steer
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I sit—
    lost in my head again,
    letting the music hit.
    It carries me
    from one emotion
    to the next.
    Sometimes—
    I don’t know
    where it’ll take me.

    Shuffle’s got a mind of its own—

    and it’s like it knows
    what I need to hear,
    right when I need
    to hear it.

    It’s like—
    shuffle sees me,
    then shuffle reads me—

    oh, you want to get introspective?
    Here is a song—
    that’ll make you want to look inside.

    Oh, you need to get aggressive?
    Here is a song—
    that’ll make you want to go riot,
    take the pen and get violent.

    It’s like you need to cry,
    and take a walk down memory lane?
    Here is a song,
    and it’s fuel for that pain.

    I like to ride the soundwaves,
    I don’t fight it, I let the music hit—
    I can feel my whole persona shift
    with a change in beat.
    It’s like the music is
    a fast acting chrysalis—
    you see, the music wraps around me
    and I begin to change.
    It’s nothing strange—

    it’s just the way music affects me.

    It enters the bloodstream,
    my DNA rearranges—
    something fundamental changes.
    Not just the surface,
    but marrow deep.

    So I let shuffle steer—
    it knows the roads
    I don’t admit to.
    It makes me go
    where I’m meant to,
    even when I don’t see the map.

    Journey into the Hexverse…

    [A Heart That Echoes in Another Language]
    A poetic journey through music across Japan, Korea, China, and the Philippines, exploring how sound becomes identity, memory, and emotional geography.

    [Sound as a Vessel]
    “Sound as a Vessel” is a free verse poem about music as emotional architecture, exploring how international artists and soundscapes shaped identity, creativity, memory, and poetic voice.

    [The Music Holds Me Upright]
    A reflective free verse poem about using music, writing, and rhythm to navigate anxiety, depression, and emotional overwhelm.

    [Global Takeover]
    What if home isn’t a place—but something you build from the music you love? Global Takeover blends sound, culture, and identity into one borderless space.

    If you’re interested in more poetry, you can find it here → [The Library of Ashes]

  • Where Music Becomes Weather | A Poem About Memory, Emotion, and Nostalgia

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    I’ve always had a difficult time describing what music actually does to me.

    People often say a song makes them feel happy, sad, nostalgic, or energized.

    That has never felt quite specific enough.

    Music feels physical.

    Some songs settle over me like fog.

    Some arrive like thunderstorms.

    Some feel like walking outside after rain when the air still smells different.

    And then there are the songs that somehow collapse time.

    They don’t simply remind me of childhood.

    They return me to it.

    Not through memory alone, but through sensation.

    The warmth of pavement beneath bare feet.

    The way summer evenings seemed endless.

    The strange certainty that tomorrow would always have enough time.

    That’s what fascinated me while writing this piece.

    Not the songs themselves, but the environments they create inside us.

    The weather of memory.

    The emotional climates we revisit every time a familiar melody begins.

    I’ve always believed that poetry and music are close relatives.

    One speaks through rhythm.

    The other through silence between the notes.

    Both have the remarkable ability to transport us somewhere we cannot physically return to.

    This poem is my attempt to describe that journey.

    Not through genres or artists.

    Through atmosphere.

    Because sometimes music doesn’t just soundtrack our lives.

    Sometimes it changes the forecast within them.

    — Rowan Evans

    A person wearing headphones stands beneath a sky shifting from storm clouds to warm sunlight, symbolizing how music changes emotions and memories.
    Some songs don’t just play. They change the weather inside us.

    Where Music Becomes Weather
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I put my headphones on,
    hit the button—
    noise cancelling.
    Then I let the music play,
    let it lead my emotions
    whatever which way.

    I drift through different soundscapes—
    crossing borders in sound,
    watching emotion mix with ink
    like paint on the canvas.

    Certain songs
    feel like humidity.
    They put a heavy feeling
    in your chest,
    it almost makes it hard
    to catch your breath.

    Other songs
    feel like clouds.
    The way they hold me
    in soft hands.
    And I feel safe,
    because they hold me close
    but in motion—
    like a slow dance.

    But then
    there are those songs—
    the ones that feel
    like warm concrete
    on bare feet.
    Like time travel,
    I’m back in my childhood.

    Back when summer felt endless,
    and every day was measured
    by the position of the sun.

    Before I knew what nostalgia was—
    only that certain songs
    felt familiar before I’d ever heard them.

    Journey into the Hexverse…

    [A Heart That Echoes in Another Language]
    A poetic journey through music across Japan, Korea, China, and the Philippines, exploring how sound becomes identity, memory, and emotional geography.

    [Sound as a Vessel]
    “Sound as a Vessel” is a free verse poem about music as emotional architecture, exploring how international artists and soundscapes shaped identity, creativity, memory, and poetic voice.

    [The Music Holds Me Upright]
    A reflective free verse poem about using music, writing, and rhythm to navigate anxiety, depression, and emotional overwhelm.

    [Global Takeover]
    What if home isn’t a place—but something you build from the music you love? Global Takeover blends sound, culture, and identity into one borderless space.

    [I’ll Be There to See Your Sunrise]
    Love has never come easily to me. This poem explores the fear, vulnerability, and quiet courage required to stay emotionally present when connection begins to matter deeply. “I’ll Be There to See Your Sunrise” is about choosing love despite the risk of heartbreak—and promising to remain long enough to witness someone fully.

    If you’re interested in more poetry, you can find it here → [The Library of Ashes]

  • A Heart That Echoes in Another Language | Global Music Poetry by Rowan Evans

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    This piece started as something simple—a list of music I love.

    But somewhere along the way, it stopped being about songs and became something closer to identity.

    It turned into a love letter to the sounds that shaped me.

    The music we grow up with—or stumble into—doesn’t stay in our headphones. It starts shaping how we feel, how we remember, how we move through the world. Over time, those sounds stop belonging to “other places” and start becoming part of our internal geography.

    This poem moves through four countries because that’s the path my ears—and honestly, my heart—took growing up. These artists weren’t just background noise; they were cultural touchpoints that expanded my worldview long before I ever had the chance to travel.

    I’ve never lived in the places referenced here. But I’ve visited them in the only way I knew how: through sound.

    The references in this poem aren’t meant to claim ownership of any culture, genre, or community. They’re acknowledgments—expressions of gratitude for the music that helped me understand myself, broaden my empathy, and feel connected to places far beyond my own borders.

    What surprised me while writing this was realizing that I don’t experience those influences as separate anymore. They’ve blended into something personal. Something translated. Something re‑owned in the act of listening and feeling.

    This poem is about that transformation.

    About how a heart can echo across languages and still sound like itself.

    Every name, every lyric nod, every language shift is part of the map of how I became who I am.

    This isn’t a history lesson or a ranking of influences.
    It’s simply the story of how music taught me to feel at home in more than one place.

    — Rowan Evans

    Glowing world map formed from sound waves connecting Japan, Korea, China, and the Philippines with floating musical elements in a dreamlike sky.
    Where sound becomes geography, and music becomes memory.

    A Heart That Echoes in Another Language
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I sit in the colors of Japan,
    red and white, as heavenly6 hits—
    it’s the melody that drifts
    under paper moons.

    It’s the beauty I see
    in the filth around me,
    THE GAZETTE resounding—

    but still I say Hi Hi when we meet,
    it’s the sounds of Tokyo
    that make me move my feet—

    Ami Onuki and Yumi Yoshimura
    shaped my global empathy,
    that’s one thing I’m sure of.

    하루하루—
    I drifted,
    my mental shifted
    as I moved across
    the East Sea.

    BIGBANG made it easy.

    The Kings of K-Pop,
    guided me deeper
    into that scene.

    It was all brand new—
    it was SHINee.

    And that’s when I fell for
    Brown Eyed Girls—
    it was like magic.

    Abracadabra.

    Pause.

    Now, if you think this is
    the full story, you’re wrong.

    This is just a Highlight
    of when I was a BEAST
    for new sounds.

    Then we shift again—
    MandoPop and Canto, too,
    Chinese R&B will make you move.

    Guess you can call me,
    Kuzco—
    the way China gave me
    a brand new groove.

    With each new song,
    I found a G.E.M.—
    a sound that will
    Get Everyone Moving.

    Nine Chen hit me
    right in the chest—
    a different kind of ache.

    So when it’s time to go,
    and it’s hard to leave—
    I say “Bai Twice,”

    before I catch my
    sonic flight,
    ride the sound waves
    to a different place—

    to different streets,
    where their beats
    reverberate in different ways—

    where I land next is a place
    that feels like home—
    a sound that speaks
    in warmth and gold.

    Musika taught me
    something important—

    that a heart can echo
    in another language.

    Dionela wrapped me
    in a softness
    I didn’t know I needed.

    And G22 showed me
    that power can be
    a kind of prayer—

    a chorus you carry
    in your bones.

    Across four nations,
    I followed melodies
    like constellations—

    each song a compass,
    each rhythm a road.

    And somewhere between
    the beats and borders,
    I learned that home
    isn’t a place you find—

    it’s a sound
    you grow into.

    Journey into the Hexverse…

    [The Soil Won’t Write Me]
    Sometimes survival looks like disappearing into art long enough to find yourself again. “The Soil Won’t Write Me” is a confessional free verse poem about displacement, mental noise, rootlessness, and using writing as a way to stay afloat.

    [The Needle Doesn’t Point North]
    “The Needle Doesn’t Point North” is a deeply personal free verse poem about displacement, identity, and spending a lifetime feeling emotionally disconnected from the place you were born while being drawn toward distant shores.

    [Weather in My Chest]
    “Weather in My Chest” is a free verse poem about emotional hyperawareness, social tension, and the quiet experience of carrying internal storms into rooms that react before a singl[e word is spoken.

    [Sound as a Vessel]
    “Sound as a Vessel” is a free verse poem about music as emotional architecture, exploring how international artists and soundscapes shaped identity, creativity, memory, and poetic voice.

    [Just Knowing You Has Been Enough]
    “Just Knowing You Has Been Enough” is a deeply vulnerable free verse poem about unspoken love, emotional fear, coded confessions, and the quiet truth of caring for someone without needing perfection in return.

    [The Streets I Walk When I Sleep]
    “The Streets I Walk When I Sleep” is a deeply intimate free verse poem about recurring dreams, emotional connection, longing across distance, and the strange feeling of remembering places and moments that have never happened in waking life.

    [Memories From a Life Yet to Come]
    Some dreams feel less like fantasy and more like memory. “Memories From a Life Yet to Come” is a reflective free verse poem about longing, displacement, emotional alignment, and the strange comfort of recognizing yourself more clearly in dreams than in waking life

    [Separate Timelines]
    “Separate Timelines” is a surreal and deeply introspective free verse poem about emotional distance, time zones, vulnerability, and the fear of losing a connection that already feels meaningful before the words are ever spoken aloud.

    If you’re interested in more poetry, you can find it here → [The Library of Ashes]