I Came Back to Music to Find It Completely Different (and Exactly the Same)
I’ve been doing music my whole life. I grew up playing violin and went to a boarding arts high school. My peers were musicians, modern and ballet dancers, visual artists, and actors. Even though music was much of my waking life, it was also an outlet.
There was a music library at my school in which I spent a lot of time. You reached it by going up a spiral 1980s modernist staircase set in a dark corner of the main library.
The library had a huge vinyl collection. You could check out records and listen to them in wooden booths underneath a tall ceiling, surrounded by big windows. It smelled musty at all times of the year.
Pieces of colored tissue paper waved in the air vents, the only movement in an otherwise still space. I spent a lot of time browsing for music I’d never heard before.
One day, I stumbled onto Hildegard von Bingen. The first time I listened to a recording of her music, it was nighttime and empty in the music library.
I had my head nestled in my arms on the desk, and five minutes into the record my arms were wet with tears. These weren’t sad tears but rather tears that arose from the psychic release the music afforded. The music was some kind of magic.
I returned many times to listen to that record at night close to the library’s closing time. It became a soothing practice.
I kept this musical ritual to myself because I didn’t expect anyone to understand it. It was kind of weird. I think I also wanted to protect it from the scrutiny of others in order to keep it special, maybe even kind of sacred.
I went to college to study music. But I couldn’t find a good place to practice violin; playing in my tiny, shared dorm room was a non-starter. I couldn’t match my jaded attitude to the fresh intensity of my classmates in the orchestra.
I got so nervous on the theory placement exam, a high-pitched noise rang loudly enough in my ears that I couldn’t identify a major third. Within my freshman year, I stopped playing violin altogether.
Feeling very lost, I joined a women’s a cappella group my sophomore year. We were off the beaten path of a cappella and (mostly) sang traditional Bulgarian folk music.
During the first rehearsal, there wasn’t a lot of sheet music. I pointed out that we weren’t singing what was on the page, and the student-conductor said, “Don’t worry about that.” While my classical music mind revolted, I managed to get over it fairly quickly.
Three years later, this group had become my community and some of my best friends. Eventually, I was the one telling the new members, “Don’t worry too much about sheet music.” Eventually, I learned that there’s almost nothing better than singing loudly with your friends.
My now-husband got me into indie music during our grad school days in Boston. Prior to meeting him, my life was soundtracked by Dvorak, Sibelius, and eventually Slavic folk music. He stole my heart to a soundtrack heavy on the Grizzly Bear.
Together, we started making sounds in a digital audio workstation called Reason. The first foray into trying to make electronic music was an attempt to recreate the synth sounds from a song by The Knife. Six years later, he had lost interest in the project, but I had become dedicated to electronic music making.
“Like A Pen,” see synth sound at 1:29
I didn’t share my electronic music with anyone besides unsuspecting close friends. My music was weird, and I liked it that way. I felt protective of my loops.
It was a private practice, musical therapy. In a lot of ways, it was like my time in the music library.
However, the thread of music was loose. Despite years singing with friends and dabbling in electronic music, I still didn’t identify as a musician. In my mind, “musician” was an identity I’d left behind in high school.
Fast forward a few years and I was working as an intern in Olympia, Washington state’s capitol. I was often done with my day around 3 p.m. I walked back from the imposing marble capitol building to my room in an old big creaky house surrounded by a garden, singing along to Bjork’s “Medulla.”
My housemates were artists, and they were always doing creative things around the house or out in the world. They didn’t have a Wi-Fi connection. The lack of the Internet opened up creative space for me. Those foggy days in Olympia felt expansive and full of possibilities. When I got home everyday, it was music time.
In these months of semi-isolation in Olympia, I made the decision to take my music and, by extension, myself, more seriously. At a practical level, I took my music more seriously in order to create something satisfying to fill my long empty swaths of free time: a proper project for wintry afternoons.
At an existential level, I resuscitated my earlier identity to give myself something to hang onto. My career path had gotten so topsy-turvy (from classical violinist to chemist to microbiologist to labor advocate?) that I wasn’t sure who I was anymore. Music was still there, waiting for me.
My shift in self-perception allowed me to be more thoughtful. I thought about lyrics. I thought about song structure. If I sang something catchy in the shower, I’d rush to my keyboard to capture it.
I finished an album in my creaky room in Olympia. I decided to take a leap and perform this new music. The first time I got up at an open mic, a sensory bubble formed around me on stage, and I couldn’t see past a foot in front of me. Time slows down when I’m performing.
I’ve come to realize that performance is an act of commitment. I ended up getting so into open mics that I was performing multiple times a week and eventually played some real shows before the plague beset us.
While I have found so much joy in performance itself, the act of performing has allowed me to become a part of a musical community in Seattle, which has had so many positive benefits I didn’t anticipate when I made the decision to take the leap to the stage. It feels good to show up for new bands playing some of their first shows.
I have some great stories of the wonderfully weird people who make up the dedicated and extremely supportive open mic community. (I will not forget Jesus is Weed, a regular on the open mic circuit). I’ve met artists with whom I’ve gone on to play shows, made friends who give feedback on songs drafts and ask me to do the same, and crossed paths with musicians who inspire me to grow as an artist.
In some ways, I’m back to where I started over 10 years ago when I was an aspiring musician listening to Hildegard Von Bingen albums late at night. But in other ways, I’ve returned to being a musician to find the whole experience completely different. My music-making has moved out of the realm of the personal ritual. I have had to let go of being so protective of my weird creations.
Music has gone from something I tried to achieve to not only something that helps me interpret and understand the world but also something that I’ve been able to build community from. I’ve learned some lessons along the way, but mostly, there’s nothing better than singing loudly with your friends.
— Carolyn B.
Carolyn B. performs under the name Mt. Fog and is a former scientist and forever a musician living in Seattle with her cat and husband. Find her music at mtfog.bandcamp.com and on streaming platforms.
