Hi!
I missed you blog! It’s been a while since we last connected. A lot has changed, we moved to the neighborhood of Chelsea from the neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights about 2 weeks before this crazy Covid-19 thing happened. Well, so much to say about that. I’m here specifically to share a journey that was birthed by this whole Corona Virus situation!
For the past 2 years I have had melodies in my mind that wouldn’t leave me. If I took my kids on a playdate, there they were, if I jogged at the local track, there they were, while working on my job, there they were loud and clear as well! I thought I was going crazy, really, until I spoke to a lovely and talented human named Bryan, who is the singer songwriter for the amazing band Everything turned to color.
He told me that it’s perfectly normal to experience that and that it just means I have material to put to work. By this point, I had already started learning to play guitar by taking the Fender App course. I loved playing guitar in the middle of the night and started to put chords under the melodies I was given.
Bryan told me to not rush and let things just flow, so I relaxed but relaxed way too much. Family, school, work and everything was taking big time calendar space, and so I kept relaxing. Meanwhile, the melodies kept coming. I had choruses, hooks, intros, outros, bridges they all kept ringing at mid volume as a background in my head while I went to and fro activities; and so I would simply record them in my phone’s voice app because I liked them.
Over time, I started to notice that there were correlation between these melodies and body parts so to speak. The intros started expanding into verses that morphed into choruses. I thought now I truly lost it! I was taking the trash out late one night and the most “corta venas” spanish for “cut your veins” sort of melody and lyrics came out. Corta venas at least in the small town I grew up means “a very sad song” or “heartbreaking” I was feeling super down and somehow my subconscious spitted that out into my conscious awareness.
Even through these experiences, I would practice guitar occasionally and somehow was stilled very relaxed about the whole thing. Fast forward Corona Virus happens, my dear hubby gets the virus and the whole family got sick for over a month. It was a very stressful time, no one knew truly what to do and the whole planet felt the uncertainty.
Somehow all the pent up emotions needed a place to be released. I felt a survival deep desire to express and self-soothe through music. I started taking my guitar practice seriously and got back to some piano playing as well. I started to work on songwriting and music production in garage band and felt surprised by how energizing yet scary the whole process felt.
Each step has taken me what feels like forever, simply because I somehow was born in the wrong time. I could easily spend my entire days in nature with no need of a technological device. Yes, I do realize this makes me a human alien and a pretty dated one, might I add.
I’m writing on this blog again as a way to solidify the journey in my mind; somehow if I share it, it feels truly real. Each little discovery from setting up my H6 Zoom microphone to recording the voice in garage band to finally completing an entire song and sharing it with my artist friends has felt victorious. I kind of don’t know what I am doing and that tension is good for me. So yeah, here I go!
Process is my favorite thing
soaking in the sun while exploring new sounds.