11/17/2025
I know it sounds cheesy, but piano has always been more than just a “hobby” for me. Exhibit A: I heard this song and played it by ear sans sheet music after weeks of musical neglect despite never having attempted to learn it before.
I was taken out of public school in 8th grade and home schooled for 2 years- where I had no friends, no social life, just books, inadvertent isolation, and a self deprecating darkness within me that would later become bipolar disorder.
My brother gave me a keyboard with notes written on the keys in black sharpie, and I practiced songs that lit up with the keys until I learned and understood and deciphered the music in my own personal, weird, neurodivergent way.
I became very good, and could easily play any song that I heard once I recognized the key or “found it” on the piano before I really learned how music theory worked. I took piano lessons against my will and hated it bc I was already accustomed to my own hand placements and my creative 8 octave range compared to the confined simplicity and general discomfort of “playing by the rules” - aka the beginner songs I had to sight read in sheet music I eventually forced myself to “calculate” and I call this method “musical math,” bc it’s literally combining the left and right sides of your brain; like learning a new language or something.
My brother also taught me chord progression and how they can flow together just like sheet music, and how to listen to any song and get away with playing it majestically by “cheating” using my trained ear, memory, and “a sheer god-given spiritual gift” as Curtis Smith (the first ever person to believe in me) told me over and over and over until I finally believed it myself.
For years I was lead pianist on my little church worship team and eventually sang and harmonized as well, and then went on to attend Sarah Kelly Music School where I was able to work with experienced musicians who helped me strengthen my talent, turn my words into lyrics I played, sang and recorded, and from there I performed in coffee shops and local venues here and there around the greater Houston area until I got pregnant, became very ill and disappeared. Just a girl and her piano against the world. That was 10 years ago and it feels like another lifetime; as I have grown and evolved so much as not only a musician but as a human, a woman, a mother, a daughter, and a sister.
Despite my respite from performing due to chronic illness, I never lost faith in my piano’s ability to breathe life into me during the unexpected hardships- sickness, divorce, death, sickness, sadness, poverty- It gave me a piece of hope to hold onto until things got better- bc no matter how crappy life can be, it always gets better. Even if only temporarily. I learned to hold onto the hope and therapeutic euphoria that creating music gives me and to NEVER die with my music still inside of me.
Anyway…yeah. That.
So thank you for reading this far and I appreciate your support đź’ś
