In Pursuit of a Dream

Part 1: Music

It was Spring 2003. Not that it really mattered what season it was… after all, we lived on an island in the Caribbean, and seasons were nothing more than words that marked the passage of time (and the arrival of tourists).

I hopped on my parents’ bed, clad in my nightgown, and snuggled up against my mother. They were watching a TV show, as they always did at night. It was a show called American Idol. They had talked about it at the dinner table before, but in classic 8-year-old fashion, I paid no mind to anything beyond my own nose.

I was curious, however, when I realized that it was a singing competition. People got up on a stage and sang, and we, the audience, got to vote for our favorites.

I like singing, I thought. I could do this.

And thus, my first dream was born: To win American Idol.

Every story has a beginning.

Finding a stage was more difficult than I thought. In the islands, I took a music class, where I vaguely recall singing “Candle on the Water,” but that was about it.

In summer 2003, I was suddenly inspired to write something late at night. I felt lonely, and the two weeks away from home in a strange, secluded Virginia summer camp was starting to wear on me. As I lay on my top bunk in the darkness, I felt a stirring. I wanted to write a song. Almost without thinking, I pulled out a piece of pink construction paper, a pencil, and a flashlight from a little cubby hole to the side of my bunk, and I began scribbling.

It’s a dumb little song. “You’re Not Alone.” I wrote about a soldier going off to war, missing his family, and feeling alone. I’m not sure why this was the song I wanted to write — most likely, my Grandpie’s stories had seeped into brain — but it was my very first song, and to this day, I still remember how it goes.

You’re not alone
I’m standing right beside you
You’re not alone
I’m with you
Just look and see
You know that you are with me
You’re not alone
I’m there

Life is one, constant performance.

Everywhere is a stage.

Someone told me that. I can’t remember who. They said that you can make a stage anywhere you go, and no matter what you do in life, you’re performing for someone, even if it’s only yourself.

But it seems I missed every opportunity to make my stage. I was a presence much like air, or maybe a tuft of dandelion floating in the wind. I wanted to be someone who could stand tall and speak loudly, but my voice came out more like the desperate squeal of a mouse.

Take my parents’ wedding in 2001, for instance. I was barely 7 years old. I wanted to sing “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music. And I did, while hiding behind my mother the whole time, as I typically did. That was my first real performance.

Then, in middle school, I joined the choir. We were small and rather insignificant as far as choirs go, almost to the point of dying out completely, but it was the only musical oasis I had in that school. After all, I didn’t play and instrument and couldn’t join the band. This was all I had.

I fondly remember my time in the alto section — lovingly dubbed “Altoids” — where we often pitted ourselves against the soprano section, or the “Sopringles.” Truth be told, I was a soprano, but as a shy girl, the only noises I could make out loud were in a lower register. So an alto I was, and an alto I would be for years to come.

I am not cut out for this… but I want to be.

The following year, the choir was all but disbanded. There were maybe five of us in my 8th grade choir class, so instead of forming a choir, we just learned about music and did musical activities. Our teacher wasn’t very helpful, and by the second semester, we were left to our own devices to do whatever it was we pleased. So we learned songs together. We wrote our own songs. We practiced for All-States.

Ah, yes. The All-State Chorus. When I heard about it, it sounded like the Holy Grail of choirs for high schoolers. I wanted to try out. And I did.

I remember walking into the audition room, a random music room in a random high school, my audition piece in hand. I sang my song. Rough, but acceptable, I thought. Then, they handed me a sheet of music with a simple melody transcribed onto it and asked me to sing it. I stared at them blankly.

Now, I’d heard about sight-singing. They told me I’d have to do it. But to be frank, I had no clue what it really meant. I assumed they would play a melody, and I would sing it back to them. That was not the case. No. They really and truly wanted me to look at the notes and sing them with no aid.

I froze, probably for several seconds, staring at the piece of paper. Finally, I said, “I don’t know how to do this.”

They took the paper, and I left.

Later, I learned I was supposed to ask for them to play the first note. Not like that would’ve helped me. I knew nothing about sight-singing. Is that what choir was all about? How did I learn this skill? Was I too late?

Shortly after, there came an epiphany.

Occasionally, my middle school held assemblies, where we all gathered in the gym to watch various performances and hear announcements. Frankly, I remember very little of it… except for this one particular day.

The nearby high school — my future school — sent their most advanced choir, the Madrigals, to perform for us. The only choir I had heard was my own middle choir, for which harmony was more of a dream than a reality. But these adult-looking people in beautiful matching black-and-white gowns and suits were above and beyond what I could I have ever expected from a high school choir.

And I wanted to be a part of it. I wanted to join the high school choir.

When it came time to sign up for classes, I remember seeing three options: The Madrigals, Concert Choir, and the Treble Chorale. The first two required auditions. After my last horrifying audition experience, I was too afraid to even try, so I signed up for the all-female, no-audition-required Treble Chorale.

And thus began my high school career in the halls that I would call my streets and the music room I would call home.

I’m here and so much more than what you took me for.

At some point right before I began high school, my cousin came to visit. She liked to sing too. She gave us a performance on our upright piano at home once, I remember, singing an original song while playing the accompaniment on the piano.

Up to this point, I’d never really considered playing and singing at the same time. It seemed impossible to little old teenage me. Only professionals could do that, surely.

Around this same time, I began piano lessons. I remember wanting them simply because I had no clue what keys corresponded to what notes and that’s all I wanted to know. (I was not an avid Google user at the time.) During my very first piano lesson, the teacher taught me where the key of E was. “Middle E” she called it, because there were several different E’s in different octaves.

Everything after this sounded like mumbling. I had learned what I wanted to learn, and so I was ready to get started.

I promptly went home, plugged my headphones into the keyboard piano I got as a gift for my 11th birthday, and spent hours writing a simple song. Knowing the keys and their corresponding notes was a godsent; I was finally able to piece together music.

At my next lesson, I sat down with piano teacher, jiggling my legs in anticipation.

“Did you complete the homework I gave you for this week?” she asked.

Of course I hadn’t. It was all about hand positions and scales and things I had no interest in.

“No,” I said, but abruptly continued: “But I wrote a song! Want to hear it?”

Before she could even say yes or no, I whipped out the sheet music and positioned myself to play. She listened intently. By the time I finished, she nodded slowly, took one appraising look at me, and then pointed to a spot at the music and said, “I think here you could add something like this…”

We spent the rest of the lesson editing my song and learning how to play it effectively with proper finger and hand-positioning.

In some ways, I think I expected her to disregard my eagerness and my song and move on to the lesson she had planned. Looking back, I’m thankful she encouraged it.

And that’s how my foray into making music began.

Strike a chord in the heart of fear.

The thing about writing piano music is it’s such a complex instrument to write music for. With most other instruments, you write one line of notes, because they can only play one note at a time. With a piano, however, you can play several notes at once, and in fact, it’s expected to do so.

So I had, of course, gotten myself into a predicament. I had very basic piano-playing knowledge, but I wanted to create and play full accompaniments to songs.

In 9th grade, at the age of 14, I became friends with a group of fellow musicians, one of whom played guitar. We hung out in the hallways after school and sang random songs we liked, accompanied by the guitar. Eventually, we started performing at our school’s coffeehouse, which was a once-a-quarter show put on by the literary club in the music room. Anyone could sign up to perform music or poetry. So we signed up as a group to perform some of our covers.

At some point during our hangout sessions, I learned about a fun little website called Ultimate Guitar. That’s where my guitar-playing friend, Ruth, found the chords for each song we played.

I’m not sure when it clicked, but it took a while. I soon came to a realization: If she can play chords on the guitar… does that mean I can play them on the piano?

The answer was yes. Yes, I could.

So I started learning about chords. I printed out the chords to my favorite songs from the website. I practiced playing different chords in different ways. I learned standard chord progressions and how to transpose them into different keys. I tweaked chords to fit the song better. I added riffs and other details to the accompaniment. At the time, I didn’t know that this knowledge would become the practical foundation for my AP Music Theory class; I was just messing around and figuring out what worked naturally.

I had a book full of songs and chords. Every night, I would come home and play around with more songs, singing quietly to myself so my family couldn’t hear. And soon… knowledge of chords and progressions translated into my own music. By the end of 10th grade, I had written and recorded a whole album for a class project. It was called Four Seasons.

And it was years later, while performing an original song for my parents on our family piano, that my mom said something that struck me. She said, “Remember when you said you wanted to play piano and sing like Gillian and you thought you never would be able to? Well, look at you now.”

And she was right. That thing I thought would be so impossible was now second nature to me.

Perhaps I can now explain the quote at the beginning of this section. People often say that fear “strikes a chord” in your heart. Fear of what I could and couldn’t do did the same to me.

But at some point, I struck back.

I still do to this day.

The journey never ends, it only begins anew.

I continued to write songs, even performing one for my high school senior showcase right before graduating. That was the first original song I had ever performed live for people. I’d barely even done so for my own parents.

Fast forward to college: I had traveled from Maryland to Missouri, I had a roommate who loved Harry Potter like me, I joined an all-female a capella group, and I had found a core group of friends. It didn’t take long for one of these friends to become my boyfriend.

The a capella group was full of wonderfully talented ladies. It felt like being back in my high school choirs, but with more freedom to do what we wanted. Not to mention, it was far more difficult.

Somehow, I was made a “bass.” If you don’t know what that means, basically, I was one of three people who provided the lower notes for the songs.

Let me clarify one thing again: I’m a soprano. But somehow I always get stuck in the alto/tenor/bass sections. I even played a man in a school musical once. I have zero clue why this happens, but I was singing, and that’s all that mattered to me, so I was content.

But I also started feeling a little stuck. The group was great, but I felt like I had lost my voice. I was playing the same chords in the practice piano rooms in the basement of the dorm, with no melody, because I didn’t know what to sing. I needed something else. Something new.

It was around this time that I really discovered GarageBand. Before, I recorded songs simply by using a device to record me singing and playing, with no editing or mixing involved. Suddenly, I was introduced to a whole new world.

Armed with my MacBook and its crappy computer mic, I set out to record a cover of Zedd’s “Clarity” using a backtrack I found on YouTube.

This opened a new realm of possibilities for me. The song sounded so professional to me, at the time. I thought, if I work on honing these skills, I can produce my first real professional album. So I had a new goal.

I practiced recording original songs, most of which I wrote for my then-boyfriend. One of the coolest things I discovered was the ability to record background singing and harmonies. My foundation in choir did not fail me; most of my songs incorporated some aspect of harmonizing and polyphony and other musical quirks that choir geeks would understand and appreciate. I was on a roll.

Unfortunately, the roll came to a stop at a giant, towering wall.

Dreams never die, but they can get lost.

I’ll spare you the sob story of Spring Semester 2014. Lots of things happened, not the least of which was leaving the a capella group and breaking up with my boyfriend. But during this time, I also lost a bit of who I was.

After I left the a capella group and officially decided to end my music minor, I didn’t know what to do anymore. I had no musical groups to confide in. Music was no longer a scheduled part of my life. I didn’t have time to make music either.

I was lost.

What do I do now?

Every time I went to the piano room, I would sit at the piano and stare at the keys. I would play a chord. Usually the chord of A-minor, my personal favorite. I would play a progression, usually Am F C G, my favorite progression. I would try to sing a song, but nothing would come out. Whatever music I had in me had run dry. And that was scary.

I began that summer alone in Columbia, Missouri, wondering what to do next. It was a blur of a summer, full of bad decisions, crazy parties, late-night escapades and just general college shenanigans. To be honest, it’s probably exactly what I needed at that point in my life. A fresh start. A new life.

That summer, during a random spurt of inspiration, I tried again. I recorded a piano version of “Misty Mountains (Cold)” from The Hobbit. It had its flaws, but the more I listened to it, the more I loved it.

That summer, I recorded more songs. Some never saw the light of day, but I still listened to them and cried. I don’t know why I cried. But I knew that I was rediscovering something I couldn’t quite place.

That summer, my bike was stolen, my pride was torn to shreds, and the money in my savings was depleted.

I wouldn’t have changed that summer for the world.

I can’t really explain it. I haven’t got the words.

At some point during my high school career, I had started writing lyrics in the Notes app on my iPhone. Anytime something came to me, however small, I would write it down. I didn’t think much of it as I went through college. It was just a way to keep little nuggets of inspiration in my pocket for future use.

During that year, 2014, I started putting this to good use. From then on, all of my songs went in that app. Fully fleshed out song lyrics with melodies and chord progressions and even a plan for how the accompaniment would sound.

This became my outlet. I wrote everything in there. Poems. Songs. Novel planning. Retorts to previous arguments I’d had with my parents or friends that I would never say out loud, but felt like I should at least write out. Everything.

In 2016, two things happened.

First of all, I invested in a program called FL Studio. To put it simply, it’s GarageBand on steroids, with more options for creating digital accompaniments to my songs. To be frank, even to this day, I’m not that well-versed in it, but it’s a work in progress.

Secondly, I received a professional $300 studio mic that I had been dreaming about getting since summer of 2014 when I discovered it in an American Music Supply magazine. I even had it bookmarked in my browser for the day I would finally just buy it… and instead, I received it as a Christmas gift from my parents.

Of course, it took a while to get it to work. I didn’t know that other pieces were missing, such as an audio interface. I didn’t even know what an audio interface was. I also needed a mic stand. I spent way too long trying to figure these details out, but once I did, I’d made it.

But there was still one thing missing. And it’s something I’m still working on today.

Caught up in this constant variation of my perfect constellation. The stars keep changing.

I have a professional studio mic.

I have lyrics and songs, ready to go and raring to be recorded.

I have FL Studio.

But I’m missing something.

Confidence.

I have everything I need to record this album. Phoenix Heart, it’s called. It’s ready to go, ready to be made into something physical and tangible. But I simply don’t have the confidence to pull it off.

To be honest, that’s always been my underlying problem. Fear kept me in the alto and bass sections, because I was afraid to let my voice go. Fear pulled me away from the things I loved in 2014 because I didn’t know how to handle it. Fear kept me hiding, clinging to my mom’s leg, while performing my favorite songs. Fear still keeps me from sharing these songs I’ve created that mean a lot to me, but I wonder if I’m ready. I want the songs to be perfect. What if they’re not?

I’m writing this on June 7, 2018. In two days, I set off on a journey to move to Los Angeles, where I’ll begin my adult life.

And I know one thing is true: I will never be ready. The perfect time will never come. There will always be doubt and confusion and fear.

Yet, I’m still making the leap to Los Angeles. I’m still doing something that scares me. But it also excites me. Isn’t that the point? To do the things that make your heart pound with excitement? To do the things that make you feel alive? To do the things that will give you a story to tell, once it’s all over?

I look back and realize that my musical journey, although still young in years, already has a story. All it took was a little passion and a little love to keep the engine churning. Failure became the story. What sort of story doesn’t have a little suspense, after all?

One of the first nuggets of inspiration I wrote in my Notes app was this:

Caught up in this constant variation of my perfect constellation. The stars keep changing.

But holding onto what I know is right is throwing me into this cosmic fight for love and life.

I’ve yet to add this to one of my songs yet, even though I know the melody. It’s one of those nuggets of truth that I’m waiting to fit into just the right song.

But for now, it works on its own to tell the story of my life in 14 words.

Everything is always changing, and it will always change. No matter how I try to rearrange the stars, they will arrange themselves.

But if you hold on to what you know to be right, if you hold on to your truth, your story will write itself.