Before/After

Hi, I’m new here.

To be honest, I’m also a little nervous to be here. I’m used to sharing words that rhyme. Words that come with melodies. And if that’s how you know me, then thanks for being here. Those songs had a beginning. I had a beginning. And while I am working on new music and some other things, I felt like this would be a fun place to share some stories and thoughts. 

 Everyone can probably pinpoint a line that gets drawn at some point in your life between a “before” and the “after”/now. For example, “before” when you lived with your parents, and “after” when you finally moved into your own place and learned about adulthood (and how much it sucks lol). Or, the "before" might be before you met your husband, wife, partner and the “after" when you can’t quite remember what life was like before them. For many people it’s life before becoming a parent, and life after. Or life before getting sober and life after. You get the point.  What’s special about certain times in your life is that it comes with people that often know you before the big life shift and, if you’re lucky, they also anchor you through, to the after. 

One of my “befores” was a really exciting year in my life when I first started writing songs and became brave enough to go to an open mic. I will never forget the very first time I went to Molly Malones on Fairfax, in Los Angeles. I had to wait four hours just to play my one song. (btw, the one and only song I had ever written at that point, after only six weeks of playing guitar under my belt). I was TERRIFIED. The longer I waited, the more in my head I got. I watched so many incredible performers take the stage and felt like a complete imposter. But as the evening went on, I made some friends. I didn’t know it then, but these friends would become deeply important in my journey as an artist. These new friends stayed all the way till the end to watch the terrified new girl take the stage. They supported me through performing for the first time ever, with my first song ever, while I shook like a leaf on stage. And when I got off of the stage they all encouraged me to come back the next week. They told me what a great performance I gave and that I needed to write more songs. I suddenly felt seen.

And so began an incredibly important year of all of us meeting up at three or four open mics a week and staying all night if we had to, for each other. Going to each other’s every single show, and encouraging each other to keep going. I know self belief is where it truly has to start when you do something authentic to you. But, hearing that what I was doing was resonating was the extra push I needed to really double down when it came to believing I deserve this. That maybe, just maybe, I was on the right road. 

A year later I left LA to live in New York and pursue being an artist full time.(lol the YEARS I spent working in restaurants, nannying, bartending, before full time artist became a reality) But that year of open mics and that community that showed up for me in LA, stuck with me always. Those people and their love stayed with me when I doubted myself and felt like I should quit. Or when I worked bartending shifts that were so long I almost didn’t pick up a guitar for days. I still keep in touch with some of that crew but some I haven’t seen in forever. 

Which brings me to last night. I am in an “after” in many ways from that period of my life. But last night I ran into one of our crew from that year, from that “before”. I walked into a restaurant and sat at the counter to order some food. I turned to my left and there was my old friend (with his lovely wife). I couldn’t believe my eyes. And suddenly I was that 20 year old playing her first open mic again. He knew me in the “before”. I saw myself through his eyes for a few minutes again in the “before”. And I saw him in his “before” as well. When I left the restaurant I felt a surge of joy and energy that can only come from a truly happy happenstance like that. I got a  glimpse back at a really special time in my life when everything felt charged with a newness and excitement of not knowing what comes next. And it reminded me, I don’t know what comes next now either. (And lately, I’ve been so scared about what the next will bring) So instead of being afraid of that, or being worried about what may happen next, I should remember I am in a “before” RIGHT NOW. Who knows what exciting things I’ll look back on in the next “after”. X