This is the latest installment in my memoir project, written as a series of letters to my future daughter. Here are the previous entries: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four
From the moment I emerged from the womb, I was obsessed with music.
Well, maybe not from that exact moment. I was probably preoccupied with, you know, learning how to breathe air and stuff.
But music was my first love and first language. I remember humming little songs to myself as I spun around, my first dabblings in songwriting. I didn’t know how to write those songs down, as I was a literal toddler, but I loved making up little melodies and singing them to myself. My parents even got me a tiny Walkman with a “record” option and had me singing into it from time to time. I wish I knew whatever happened to those old cassettes. If I ever hit it big, those tapes would be worth millions.
Some of my favorite memories involved singing and dancing around pretending I was Dodger, a cool dog voiced by Billy Joel from an old Disney film called Oliver and Company. (If, by happenstance, you end up with a brother, his name will likely be Oliver. He is not named after this film. Let this be clear. Your brother was not named after a movie with a cool dog voiced by Billy Joel. I just liked the name, okay?) Sometimes my mom would work out and play stuff like Foo Fighters and the Backstreet Boys, which is probably considered oldies by the time you read this. While she would do this, I’d stand in the mirror and lip-synch to the songs, make-believing I was some kind of rock star.
The point being, music and performing have always been an integral part of my identity. Noting this, “Santa” gifted me my first guitar for my eighth Christmas. A year or two later, my parents signed me up for one-on-one guitar lessons with a young punk named Eric, who my mom thought was hot. I’d been kicked out of swimming, gymnastics, dance, and pretty much everything else due to my then-very-undiagnosed ADHD, but I couldn’t get kicked out of guitar lessons. And I didn’t want to be kicked out either! I took to the instrument like a seal to water, and while I didn’t practice as much as I should’ve (read: undiagnosed ADHD), I was a natural. The language and theory of music just made sense to me.
But there was more to my love of music than just the music itself. I loved the idea of sharing it with people. I would watch Behind the Music documentaries for hours on end all about the inner workings of bands I liked. Maybe it’s because I had trouble making friends and was hilariously unpopular as a kid, but I idolized the idea of having a musical found family. I craved the intimacy of working closely with other people who had the same goals and interests as me.
Still, music was very much my personal thing, until one fateful day when I realized I needed to perform, to share my music with people outside my inner circle. It was the first time I ever sang in front of an audience.
In seventh grade, we took an end-of-the-year field trip to the Motown Museum in Detroit. My days at that school were numbered — I’d convinced my parents to let me switch to a semi-private school to escape the constant bullying. Still, I had to get through this stupid trip, which actually was a welcome reprieve from my usual day of sitting in the library like a loser and actively trying to avoid contact with my peers.
The museum, nicknamed Hitsville, USA, was actually more like a small house than whatever you’re picturing, and it’s been said some of the greatest songs of all time had been recorded there. I don’t remember much about the field trip itself, except that in the recording studio, there was a giant hole in the ceiling. This was a reverb chamber, where recordings would be played into and recorded back in order to get a crisp echo effect. The tour guide wanted a student to demonstrate how it worked by singing beneath it. No one’s hands went up. A shiver ran down my spine.
I will never see these people again.
Meekly, I raised my hand and all eyes were on me, the class weirdo who never talked. I took my place underneath the reverb chamber and sang the chorus of my favorite Motown song, “My Girl” by the Temptations.
The silence that followed was deafening as dozens of wide eyes zoned in on me. Suddenly, the room erupted into applause. As I took my place back in the group, I was greeted with a flurry of “Woah, that was incredible!” Even my biggest bully asked me not to forget her when I won American Idol. For my last few days at that school, I was no longer the class pariah, but the class Mariah.
Things changed quickly once I discovered my niche in life. I started playing guitar and singing for literally anything I could weasel my way into. At my new school, I became “the voice” of the student population, singing the national anthem for every event and accompanying the jazz band with its vocal pieces. I even got to play (an obviously much whiter) Beyoncé in a choral performance of “Single Ladies,” leotard and all. I became a significantly more confident person with every performance under my belt.
Cadence, I don’t know what your calling will be. Considering who’s likely going into making you, you’ll probably be musically gifted as well. And incredibly smart. And beautiful. And probably have IBS, but you win some and you lose some. No matter what, I know your passion will find you one way or another. And once you find it, chase it with everything you’ve got.
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JESSA JOYCE 