My whole life I have been a music fanatic, an underground one until recently. I never realized how much I did cherish music until I got into high school. And because I had lost almost all my childhood memories, I was worried that my recent obsessive music lover personality was fake. Over these last few months I have been gaining some of my lost things back including some memories and pieces of my personality and I’ve realized I have always held music in a special part of my heart. Through it hasn’t been as big as it is now (Thanks to AFI), it was still important to me though I didn’t realize it. Like I remember being a small child, I mean young, really young and wanting to learn to play the harp. I remember dreaming of being like one of those mystical people playing the harp and musing people. (Yes I know I used that in the wrong context but this is my story and if I want to use musing in the wrong context, I will). Seeing a harpist in a movie would make me flip. I also wanted to be a dancer but that’s a whole different story. Soon after that I got my hands on this small cheap keyboard and played the batteries out of that thing. That’s where my love of piano music and the song Green Sleeves came from. I remember being on my porch in the sun playing my keyboard all by myself and then I would push the little button on it and just sit there and play Green Sleeves with it. Imagine an enthusiastic little kid with a keyboard in their lap, hitting the keys with such vigor and a head moving back and forth like the thing a conductor holds and that was me when I was listening to Green Sleeves. Actually I still do that but without the keyboard and don’t get me started on what I do when I hear Beethoven’s Fifth. Now keep in mind I didn’t actually know how to play a single song on that keyboard just loved to mess around and make my own songs. Later on when somehow I lost my life on that keyboard, I found new life in hearing my neighbors and best friends playing their piano. Oh man, I loved hearing them play and longed that I had a talent like that. They taught me a few songs that I can still kind of play if my memory is on my side. That didn’t last long though because we were young and had better things to do like playing witches and making various useless things but again a whole another story. After this is a period where either I didn’t have a musical desire or I don’t remember it. So the next crazy instrument I wanted to learn was the drums. Haha that was a fun one. Now I thought this desire was more of a secret one but I guess my dad knew about it so I must not remember some of the stuff I did during this period or before. I don’t think this period lasted long though it came back. So like about 80% of teenagers, I wanted to play guitar. This one hit hard, hard enough for me to convince my parents to buy me my acoustic beauty that though I don’t know how to play, I love dearly and have thrown out curses when I thought someone scratched her and then more when I found their filthy fingerprints on her lovely polished front. I fell into that for months where I would practice everyday out of the booklet it came with. I was learning the little practice songs out of it. I never knew about the tabs I could get online for the songs I loved so I was stuck with my little booklet. I’m not sure what really happened but overtime I didn’t play as much and then my parents were getting a separation and I lost my book and then my love barely saw the light out of her case. I tried to play every once in awhile where I would just strum and play the practice song I still remembered but without the book and playing the same simple thing over and over I would get bored and put her back in her case. Though I never let her gather dust. I didn’t really ever play her but I still loved her with some deep passion I couldn’t explain and still can’t. Soon I sort of lost any hope of me learning to play and took up singing. Through I have no previous memory of wanting to be a singer, I have a feeling that I had one before. The want of becoming a singer was subdued in me, hidden and buried under many layers of stage fright. I never really told anyone but I loved to sing. I had no thought of joining choir but with a push from Monica, I did. I found it mediocre, I learned a lot and people said my voice was better but there was one thing I hated, I dreaded. I couldn’t stand the tests. I just couldn’t do them. I remember my first one. I was shaking and freaking out. With the tests you had to stand in front of the class with one person from each of the other sections. So that means two other people and me and we had to sing our parts in the song we were learning. So though I was standing up there with two other people, I was still pretty much singing by myself. Oh man they scared the crap out of me. The first time, when it was my turn, I went up and tried to breathe. I was shaking with fright and started crying. It was awful. I can’t remember fully what happened after that but I just stood up there and sung the song while I was crying. I can’t remember why but she sent someone up there to help me and sing with me and because of that I got the lowest possible grade. I think it was my friend that went up to me and I remember afterward they hugged me and held me and told me it was okay. I felt awful and like such a loser. After that test I knew it wasn’t for me but I stayed in choir for the rest of the semester with a little push from Monica. So the next test I swore I would not cry. I swore on everything that meant anything, I would not cry. I don’t remember practicing on anything so hard in my life. I knew the song backward, frontward and every other way. I sung it to my friends and the people in the halls. I knew the song. So when it came to the day I told myself I would go first because you get to go again if you mess up if you go first. Well I tell myself that someone got up there before I did but really I chickened out. So I ended up going third or fourth. I was a little frightened but I told myself I knew the song and would have no problems. So I was singing and singing and I sung my solo with no problems but when the others came back in to join me something happened and I lost my place. So I stopped singing and searched frantically for my spot and right when I found it and was about to continue singing, the teacher sent someone down to help me. So again I got the lowest grade. I was pissed to say the least. I knew the song so well. I tore myself up for making such a stupid mistake. I never did get better than that lowest grade. It was different singing in front of them. They knew music. They would know if I hit the wrong note, if I went flat or if I went sharp. They could pin point my mistakes. I was starting in the middle of the year and knew absolutely nothing. Plus most of them had already been in a choir for 4 years prior. Then there were the concerts. That feeling, that feeling was ecstasy. The feeling of being on that stage was magical. It was amazing, it was great. My first concert possibly one of the worse things that could possibly happen for a frightened first timer, happened. I fell on my face in front of the whole crowd. Yep, that’s right I fell on my face. Scraped my knees, legs and hands up. I had got my dance shoes the night before and it was a rule that we couldn’t walk outside in them so the bottoms were still completely smooth and when I got up to walk up to the stage, I turned the corner and fell on my face and hands. And it was on camera. I simply jumped back up and tried to hold back my laughter. When we got on the risers half the choir was laughing and the other half was mumbling, "Are you okay?" to me. I shook it off and acted like nothing had happened. Later I almost cried from embarrassment but shrugged it off. The ecstasy of the stage swallowed me and I was too happy to let anything get to me. That night I slid on every sidewalk I past and scuffed up the bottoms, there was no way I was going to fall again. The next concert I joked saying that I was going to fall off the top of the risers and through I almost did, I didn’t and again had a blast. The feeling of the stage is nothing I have ever experienced before and something I will never forget. Through I quit choir, that feeling is what keeps the desire to be a singer still in my heart. After this the desire to play the drums slightly came back but a big wave of desire for guitar came back. I picked up my love and tried to learn to play On the Arrow by AFI for hours. I only stopped because my fingers were cramping and I couldn’t hit some cords. One spot I looked at though and literally said, "What the hell? My fingers don’t go that way!" Though I’m sure it’s a very simple song, it will be my first and so I find it hard. So I asked anyone I knew that might play guitar to help me and with no help I kind of abandoned it and here I am now. I was talking to my grandma yesterday and I was telling her about playing guitar and all of this and stuff and she tells me that she thought I sung very well because when I lived with my grandparents, I would sing up in my room all the time. Well she told me that I just need to have more confidence in myself and not to be so self-conscience. So today I find myself working on a song and actually singing the lyrics. And though it’s normal for me to imagine myself on stage singing a cover of a song or actually singing a song I had wrote with my band, I am actually thinking it might be a possibility. I always think of what I would say during interviews and the horrible stardom but the benefits of it like meeting people and making a change. I don’t know, to be someone would be nice. I just had an image of myself singing my song and playing my guitar and recording a video of it and seeing what people thought. It would be nice to feel the ecstasy of the stage again…