February 1, 2025
Blessings to everyone!
I hope your new year is looking and feeling good so far.
I have an exciting announcement. In addition to absolutely loving photography and making collage art, the first creative love in my life was/is music and I’ve again started singing, writing and producing my own music!
I began singing in choirs from 5th grade until I graduated and was always way too shy and unconfident to sing solo. I wanted to do musicals in my latter years in high school, but alas, had no time to attend musical rehearsals because I was always swimming competitively and always in the pool (average of 10-11 workouts per week).
I also took piano lessons in my sparse free time at the age of 13, and was enrolled as a piano student in the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. A few months later, the stodgy old male instructor, who I remember as getting very angry at me for not practicing enough (he said something stern with a literal “flying fuck”) called my parents. He suggested that since I had a great musical ear and tested in the “genius” modes of theory and sound, that they should consider letting me pursue music full time. That would mean quitting swimming.
My parents sat me down and put the proposition in front of me. My initial reaction was pure excitement at the thought of pursuing music and quitting swimming. I had a love/hate relationship with swimming and although I was immensely talented like my Olympic swimmer sister & coach father, I had this other passion in my life: music. I considered the switch only briefly. The thought of losing my swimming tribe and giving up something I had done since the age of six scared the bejesus out of me and brought me shame. I didn’t want to lose their love and support. I didn’t want to be judged. This was how I was living my life then – looking for love and approval. I didn’t know any better, I didn’t know myself better. I ignored the music fire in my belly and was too shy and lacked the courage to follow my music dreams at that time. I resigned myself to swimming. And while I was an Olympic level swimmer, I didn’t want to go to the Olympics.
I regretted that decision for a long time. Throughout the past 5 decades, music and singing have come and gone. I sang Jazz professionally for about 10 years from the mid 90s to 2004, after I got up the gumption to take private voice lessons and started to like my voice then got super confident. It was in 2004 after I had moved to Santa Fe NM and had a contract weekly Hotel gig that I lost my voice. I wasn’t sick though. But it sounded like I had laryngitis. At an ENT (ear, nose and throat) appointment I was told I had the healthiest vocal cords they had ever seen. Nothing made sense. The issue lasted a year. Once my voice came back, I dabbled in singing again but never rebuilt my confidence. Life got in the way.
The past few years I’ve been building my photography business and it’s been extremely challenging. But always, in the back of my mind, there has been music. In October 2023 I had a dream of a flat, shiny donut like portal standing upright, with only a bottom sliver of the circle in the earth in one of my desert photo landscapes. The following February, I watched the Grammys. Their stage setup was a flat, shiny donut like portal standing upright with only a bottom sliver of the circle into the stage. Presenters would walk through this portal to and from the stage. Aha! I got chills. A sign! – get back into music, my destiny. The music portal in my landscape – my life landscape that is!
Despite that aha moment, I was determined to sell my art and spent the entire 2024 immersed in the art world participating in shows and fairs, too afraid to really commit back to my singing and music. In April and June, I broke the same arm, along with my leg in April. A sign? Yes, but I wasn’t paying attention, or maybe I’m just really stubborn (yes that is true). In November 2024 after a disappointing year of sales, I finally gave myself permission to get back to my first love: singing and writing music.
As I write this, I am now immersed in an online music production, mixing and mastering program called The Reverse Engineer with Mastering.com, and plan to produce professional recordings of my own music for release, and engineer for others! The previous week I attended a workshop in LA with this esteemed community. I will continue my photography & collage business, attend fairs and shows, and start painting again.
I envision 2025 to be a great year and I hope you are too. 🤩
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