03.25.26
I was born into a musical family. My father, and my father's father are also musicians, singers, and songwriters. According to my father, I came out of the womb singing and screaming, and I never stopped. As a kid, I had countless different interests, and music was just one of them. I played with the instruments around the house, I mean… what kid wouldn't… but I was really into writing more than anything. As a child I told stories, put on performances, wrote plays and performed them at school with my classmates. I use to take printer paper from school and fold them up, staple the middle shut to make a spine and then write my own books by hand (this was before everyone had a personalized computer in their pocket obviously). I loved writing as a child because I could create and escape to my own world, which helped me get through the hardest parts of my childhood. I was born with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, so my childhood was anything but normal, and I suffered through crippling pain that made me want to end my own life. Writing was, and still is, my therapy. If living with rheumatoid arthritis wasn't bas enough, things were about to get worse for me as a child. At the age of 9 I would be diagnosed with Macrophage activation syndrome, another autoimmune disorder that attacks the liver and kidneys. I had less than twelve hours to live one night, and I barley remember the six hour drive from our home in rural Humboldt county to UCSF hospital in San Francisco, but I do remember dying… or… what I thought and had accepted was dying. I lost consciousness, and when I regained consciousness I was in what felt like an in between space. My eyes weren't open, but I was awake and fully aware. I asked myself, “Why am I alive?” and I heard another voice that was not my own say to me, “it's not your time.” I asked, “why?” and the voice said, “you're going to make music”. That's when my eyes opened. When I got out of the hospital I had a complete change of heart. My focus went from wanting to be an author of plays and films to wanting to be a songwriter overnight. I took advantage of having musical family members and learned everything I could from them until I couldn't learn anymore and then I learned everything I could from my music teachers in school until I went off to college to get a music degree and learn even MORE about music and music production. Now, music is everything I do. If I'm not teaching music, I'm writing, arranging, recording, or performing it. I don't believe in one god, or… really any god for that matter… but I do believe in spirits… or guardian angels as one might call them, and I know that wasn't my voice that told me my time wasn't up. I have a purpose to fulfill and making the world a better place as a musical artist is it. I vow to use my artistry for good. I vow to use my voice and my platform to inspire, inform, engage, and unite people. I vow to create from a place of raw and radical honesty, always.