My Artistic Journey
I’ve been singing as long as I can remember. My parents would have to call into my room multiple times a night to tell me “It’s time to go to sleep now” because I’d be singing. For a few minutes, my parents would rest again in blissful silence, until the low humming started again. Then came the near whispered melody that crescendoed eventually to full forte until they called in again.
From there I graduated to living room stage shows and recreations of the music from Cinderella, where I played Cinderella and conscripted my best friend to be the swing for every other role. Then came drama club, chorus, show choir, and sing lessons at New England Conservatory. There were coffee houses, small professional theaters, a cover band, an EP and the discovery of voice science!
Living and breathing voice and singing so intimately, my other calling almost slipped my notice. There were also poems written on grammar school lined paper in awkward 5th grade handwriting, the creative writing magazine, the first copyright filed in high school, the romance novella (94 type-written pages) that I spend a long afternoon after school discussing with my English teacher (Thank you Mr. Rodman!).
For a long time, I suffered through the frustration of trying to fit all of my ideas into the song lyric, narrative form. Then I came to two important realizations. The first being that song lyrics don’t need to be narrative (thank you Simon LeBon) or in a structured stanza poetic form (thank you The Prodigy). The second realization was that I have been a storyteller for as long as I have been a singer. In freeing myself from having to identify solely as a singer, I could express myself in longer and more varied forms. This led me to science fiction writing, poetry, and podcasting.
I’ve been told that creating in these varied forms could be confusing, but I am now convinced that it’s more confusing in its denial. The form of a story needs to serve the story itself, not the other way around. Am I a singer? A writer? A poet? I am a storyteller through words and sound.
Thank you for coming to visit me and my work. I look forward to sharing with you!