I was having trouble with a song I’m recording for my new album, so naturally I bitched and moaned about it to my boyfriend. His reply was: “Well, that should be an easy song.” The last I wanted to hear when facing the monument task of writing, producing, recording and releasing an album is that it should be easy. So, getting my panties in twist, I said to him, “Nothing’s easy! Nothing has EVER been easy.” The poor man had no idea what was coming.
Growing up transgender on a farm in a fundamentally religious community of 200 people (half of them Amish or Mennonite) was NOT easy. Or was it?
Yes, I was bullied, beaten, tortured and tormented with the threat of eternal damnation and punishment from a wrathful god for gravitating towards the feminine, as someone who was supposed to be a boy. That was on a bad day.
But I was also taught about the beauty of nature, the importance of education, the joy of music, the rewards of discipline, the love of a family and the freedom of self-reliance. And it’s because of these things that I’m taking a lunch break on a beach in California, munching on delicious pineapple, soaking up the 75° weather in my bathing suit in the middle of winter.
I left home when I was 16 to study piano at a boarding arts school in Michigan. We didn’t have money, so I practiced for 7 hours a day to get that scholarship. I continued my classical education at an amazing University in Dallas, again on scholarship. I moved to New York and had work before I even got there, because I called every musical institution in NYC until I earned (and charmed) my way into a job. And then I continued to network and began working with New York’s brightest stars as their pianist. I learned how to perform because of them, and within 5 years was touring the world as a solo singer/songwriter. After getting the attention of a decent portion of the entertainment industry, I moved to Los Angeles to record a pop album. Hard work? Maybe.
When I focused on how hard it was to spend hours, days, months and years practicing at the piano, I lost the joy of making music. When I focused on how unfair and sexist my religious upbringing was, I lost sight of the fact that I was accepted as part of the women’s groups at church and was praised on the platform every week for delivering a sensitive (and feminine) performance at the piano. When I thought about how tiring it was to run all over Manhattan through subways and rat-infested streets, I stopped learning how to shine from the most amazing performers in the world.
After resetting my gratitude button, I was able to see how to finish the song that seemed so hard. And I found the joy that drove me to becoming an artist in the first place.
Thank goddess for the ocean, music, love and light. And for a guy doesn’t freak out when I slip into bitch producer mode.
This pineapple is effing deliiiiiicious. I hope you’re enjoying everything that’s in front of you.
