I think there’s music in me.

Our Culture has an indifferent relationship to being in process. We view a finished product, a final outcome, an established Artist, and we assume a finality that doesn’t exist. Because beneath what gets brought forth, is the story of what was. That story holds the paths that were taken and the paths that were declined. The choices that were made. I first became conscious of the music in me a little over a decade ago when I was 24. It happened in a single night, with a single guitar - and in that night I found a world in me that promised more worlds to come. I found a feeling that meant everything to me, a feeling that asked me to follow it. The truth is that I wasn’t given anything new that night, I had been writing songs since I was a child. Every journal and notebook that I’ve ever owned is full of poems and lyrics scribbled in corners. I have always been a prolific songwriter, even before I knew that there were songs in me to find. But on that night the light of consciousness met who I was and I saw myself for what I was. I could see that there was a Musician in me - and I knew that if I followed this feeling, that I would ultimately become what I saw. I would become who I was.

The thing about being in process is that more often than not there is a gap between the reality and the vision. We have been taught to view this gap as a deterrence; as a reason to turn back, to give up, to convince ourselves that the feeling is wrong. But this gap isn’t a problem to be solved, it’s an invitation to step onto the path. My early songs were raw and messy. I sang with a twang for years. I was finding and feeling my way into a voice that was mine and a life of my own. It was fucking terrifying - I took leap after leap, made mess after mess, and had my heart repeatedly broken. Being in process has required a willingness to not only continually develop my craft, but to work through my trauma and the ways that society has conditioned me to prioritize perfection and control over the wilderness within me. I have no interest in diluting my path. I share my journey to say that if you are blessed to get a glimpse of who you are; of the creativity that is inherently yours, of a feeling almost too precious to claim that there is a beauty to believing in what you’ve found. I don’t know where it will take you! And frankly I still don’t know where I’m going because just as being in process acknowledges the depth of an unseen past, it also holds the promise of an unknown future. I’ve found that a life lived in this space of trust and feeling is a life that feels like living to me. Not because of some external achievement, but because of what it awakens in me. In any given day I can turn my experiences into stories and in doing so I can change how I experience them. I can’t count how many times an unfortunate reality has given birth to a song, or a poem, or a moment of presence. Creativity is a super power that can fundamental invite a reassessment of how life is met, and of how life is created. Who do we become when we know this to be true? When our external realities become an invitation to turn to alchemy, to turn to feeling, to turn to life with the conviction that we can impact what we’ve seen. That is the path of an Artist and I believe that there is an Artist in all of us.