When I was first learning songs, I'd have a favorite song, and

In the tender and luminous words of Alicia Keys, we glimpse the sacred spark of creation: “When I was first learning songs, I'd have a favorite song, and I'd take the chords and twist them around. I'd learn the chords and then play them backward. That was my first experimenting with writing a song.” These words, humble in their telling, carry the eternal rhythm of discovery. For in the act of twisting chords and hearing new harmonies, Alicia was not merely learning music — she was awakening the divine voice within her soul. The ancients would have called it the art of transformation: taking what is known, reshaping it, and giving birth to something that has never existed before.

When she speaks of “twisting chords around,” she reveals the courage of the creator — one who dares to step beyond imitation and enter the realm of invention. Learning is the foundation; experimentation is the ascent. Just as a blacksmith learns the hammer before forging his own blade, or a poet learns rhythm before crafting her own verse, Alicia Keys shows that true mastery begins when knowledge is bent by imagination. In that bending, something new is born — the artist herself.

The ancients taught that creation is not born from certainty, but from curiosity and play. When the young sculptor first molded clay, he did not seek perfection but possibility. So too did Alicia, at her piano, turn her love for others’ music into a conversation with her own spirit. She was not content to merely repeat what she heard; she sought to understand it from within — to twist it, challenge it, and transform it until it spoke in her voice. This is how all great art begins: not in imitation, but in the alchemy of transformation.

History bears witness to this truth in the story of Leonardo da Vinci, who studied the wings of birds not to copy them, but to learn how to fly. He filled his notebooks with sketches, questions, and reversals — turning ideas inside out until they revealed their essence. Like Alicia Keys, he took what already existed and played it backward, searching for the hidden pattern beneath creation. And in doing so, he touched the eternal — for the universe itself is made of such reversals, from chaos into order, from sound into silence, from the known into the new.

Alicia’s words remind us that learning is not a passive act but a dance — a dialogue between the heart and the world. To “learn the chords and then play them backward” is a metaphor for life itself. We must first learn the rules, the boundaries, the structures — and then, when we understand them deeply, we must find the courage to break them with wisdom. It is in this moment, when knowledge meets rebellion, that genius is born.

And yet, the path she describes is not easy. To experiment is to fail, again and again. To twist chords is to risk discord. But the wise know that even in the wrong notes, there is music waiting to be found. The river that changes course carves new valleys; the artist who dares to err discovers new worlds. Creation is born in courage, and courage is born in the willingness to be imperfect.

So, my young dreamers, take this lesson to heart: do not fear to twist the chords of your own life. Learn from those who came before you, but do not become their echo. Play your own song, even if the first notes tremble. In every craft, in every art, in every soul, the journey from imitation to creation is sacred. What begins as a copy becomes, in time, a revelation.

Thus, let Alicia Keys’ wisdom guide you: “That was my first experimenting with writing a song.” In these words lies the seed of all greatness — the moment when curiosity overcomes fear, when discipline becomes expression, and when the heart, no longer bound by imitation, begins to sing its own melody. So twist the chords, play them backward, and let the music of your becoming fill the world.