Resonance and Reverie: A Journey of Creation

Earlier this week, my musical mentor told me that the first time he laid his gaze on a drum kit, at age 5, he knew he’d found his life’s passion.  His eyes sparkled with childlike wonder as he divulged this admission of original inspiration.  The story, spotlessly cinematic, evoked the love-at-first-sight archetype which forges so many passionate artists.  It’s the kind of memory that’s a joy to recount; anybody with such a purely innocent vignette etched in their brain must jump at every opportunity to share their divine experience as motivational soliloquy.  These tales, destined for the first pages of memoirs, are inherent art pieces, as perfect as any conscious creation.  

My musical origin story was far rockier.  For the longest time, my consumption of fairytale artist births — which dominate the public narrative — discouraged me from sharing my truth.  But, I’ve recently begun to believe that imperfect experiences like mine are much more common, and equally worthy of merit.  In their honest realism, their beauty matches that of any idealist anomaly.  Here, I’ll share my journey, in all its initial friction and eventual triumph. 

At eight years old, I kicked and screamed as I was dragged into the basement practice room of Church Street School for Music and Art where I had my first piano lesson.  Barely old enough to tie my shoes, I preferred spending my time bounding through the playground or eating popsicles.  I violently protested spending my weekday-afternoons any other way.  With knuckles white from exertion, I clasped onto the fear that piano lessons wouldn’t satiate my naive jubilance or hold my brief attention span. 

Unfortunately, I was right. My petrifying piano teacher, a classically-trained maestro from Italy, failed to bridge the gap between my simple love of children’s songs and her highbrow virtuosity; she defaulted to teaching me Beethoven and Bach compositions I’d never heard before.  In my eyes, the juvenile songbook to which I’d been predisposed existed on an entirely different plane than these archaic classical pieces.  I continued seeing this teacher for my entire third-grade school year, but I would have hurried back to the playground with no regrets had it been up to me. 

I’m transported back to this moment whenever I see a wailing toddler on a ski lift or in the deep end of a swimming pool.  They don’t know how lucky they are, I think as I reflect on how much I’ve grown past that squeamishness.  Hindsight has made me grateful that I was urged towards adventurous extracurriculars during my formative years – I’m rewarded for my adolescent bravery by the decade-long culmination of athletic and artistic technique – but, in the simplicity of my third-grade mind, I failed to see the point.   Although these piano lessons felt inconsequential and ineffective at the time, they laid the foundation of my current musicianship.  I’ve decided that, when I have children, I’ll nudge them out of their comfort zones while their neuroplasticity is at its peak; if their miserable cries of protest threaten to erode my firm stance, I’ll recall the delayed gratification that my childhood malaise brought me and imagine the gifts awaiting my offsprings.  

My parents certainly applied this philosophy while raising me, for they aimed to give me a musical upbringing that contrasted their grim high-school-chamber-band trauma.  Although they look back on the musical aspects of the experience with distaste, this orchestra was the fortuitous location at which they first met.  Their blooming love was a side-plot of the rigor and professionalism expected within the band.  My dad played tuba and my mom played clarinet.  Both of them detested their instruments due to the academic pressure and competitive stress that surrounded their school’s music program.  The conductor sought soulless performances of traditional compositions, devoid of all originality, and punished students whenever they strayed from flawless recreation of the given sheet music.  Despite the frightening environment, though, the ensemble was so accomplished that it brought my parents on extensive tours around Europe and the United States.  They’d never left their native land of Israel before, and they had their musicianship to thank for their horizon expansion.  However, after a few years, my parents graduated and put down their instruments for the last time.  Because they’d never chosen any of the music they played, they failed to form an expressive relationship with music.  In me, they saw an opportunity to explore other strategies of instrumental education, hoping that my craft would have more longevity than theirs.  

Therefore, by the end of third grade, my parents’ acknowledged the grief I felt towards my piano lessons and moved to pacify my pain: the next fall, they set me up with a new piano teacher, Jacob Pleakis, who was far more willing to meet my eight-year-old brain where it was.  Its location, ever since summer break, had been deep in the weeds of a Coldplay fixation.  In fact, I’d recently dragged my mom all the way from our home in lower Manhattan to Izod Stadium in the New Jersey Meadowlands to see them perform; she dutifully filmed the entire concert for me while I was held hostage by my tears and goosebumps.  

Jacob treated my atypical obsession with gentle patience.  He lit the spark of musical curiosity within me as he effortlessly performed — on the same Church Street School piano I’d come to loathe — every Coldplay song I called out to him.  Within a few weeks, he’d even taught me how to play them!  Understanding the connection between the music in my headphones and the music emerging from my fingertips, I outgrew the need to be uncomfortably pushed by my parents.  Every lesson left me transfixed and amazed.  That was my romantic musical genesis, delayed but better than never.  I began to hear faint whispers of my oncoming compulsion to produce music, a counterweight to balance my consumption of it.  

My appetite for both sides of this scale grew in conjunction.  Not only did Jacob teach me to recreate compositions that I loved, but he also introduced me to new music that blew my prepubescent mind.  The tidbits of Jacob’s favorite songs by Ben Folds, The Decemberists, The Shins, and Death Cab For Cutie that he shared only primed me to go home and voraciously study these artists further.  For the first time, I was controlling and curating my listening material with unquenchable curiosity, transcending the music forced upon my ears by my parents’ CD collection and New York City’s omnipresent pop radio stations.  With the help of the internet, I tore through studio recordings, live performances, interviews, and more.  I’d mapped out the entire web of bands comprising the early-2000s indie rock movement before I left fourth grade.  Now, I find it endlessly amusing that this niche subgenre was my first expression of artistic taste; I have Jacob to thank for that.  But, the fringe rarity of this music, especially within my elementary school, made these songs feel mine.  A cultivator of my own distinct cultural crops, I felt empowered.  I relished the emotions that these songs created within me, and thanks to my piano lessons, I was beginning to understand the musical inner-workings that crafted this vibrational alchemy of feeling.  Mimicry of past compositions encompassed the entire scope of my piano playing, but soon I’d be utilizing this vocabulary to form ideas of my own.  

The need for autonomous improvisation presented itself once I left the solitude of the practice room and joined my first ensemble. The summer before fifth grade, I was enrolled in Church Street School’s “Rock the House” summer camp: for one week, I joined four other young students in forming a fleeting rock band.  Together, we prepared a handful of cover songs for an end-of-week performance after which our band would dissolve.  In the process, we gained invaluable knowledge and experience through creative collaboration.  For me, the greatest lesson came as soon as I walked through the door.  Scanning the room, I noticed that my band already had a pianist but was lacking a drummer.  Echoing my observation, a counselor approached me, knelt down, and gingerly asked if I had any interest in learning the drums.  Pondering the question, I understood that my stubborn, fearful refusal would lead to a lopsided band with two keyboardists and no rhythm.  Leaving my comfort zone behind, I nodded in affirmation.  Little did I know this leap of blind faith would lead me towards my destiny.  

My sudden introduction to playing the drums was aided by my familiarity with the songs we played; I begged to have my indie rock idols included in our setlist of classic Beatles songs and modern top-40 hits.  No longer reading sheet music, I played beats by ear, even gaining the confidence to intuit a few drum fills and ad-libbed rhythmic accents.  Instinctual and thoughtless, the music was inside me; I couldn’t have felt farther from the isolating practice room of my piano lessons.  I was one of several musicians orbiting each other, and the music erupting from me became more reactive and spontaneous as a result.  Finally, my playing shed the robotic rigidity of accurately recreating existing songs: I was composing in real time.  Beyond this, I was subject to new levels of musical accountability by the other observant ears in the room.  For the first time, I saw that being in a group entails responsibility: the collective is only as successful as its weakest link, and any individual blunder impacts everyone.  It was here that I learned to play with focused sincerity and smile through my mistakes. 

Nobody else could have produced the sound I made on those drums.  For better or worse, I was uniquely myself.  Drumming felt as natural as breathing, and my craft became an extension of my being.  The alchemy of all my thoughts and past experiences encoded in my music, each note became self-study.  I was only ten years old, but I was growing acquainted with my inherent nature through the impulse of each drum hit.  This wordless state became meditative.  Consistently, I walked away from the drum kit with a clarified sense of identity and direction.  

We all deserve such an outlet.  Some paint, some dance, and some write, but all artists would agree on the therapeutic power of material creation.  Our three-dimensional world comes from formless homogeny, and will one day return to it, but in this present moment we possess the privilege to erect formations of our own.  By routinely making space for creative time, and releasing all judgments of creations, we allow supernatural forces to flow in through our brains and out through our hands.  These ideas were never ours in the first place — we’re just checking them out from the universal library — but our unique manifestations of the divine antenna signals we receive shine light on our human idiosyncrasies.  

People who lack such creative pathways inevitably seek other outlets, often surrendering to destructive forces.  But creating only seems difficult before the first step is taken, and the passive route of least resistance is seldom healthy or empowering.  In fact, this friction (or, hormesis, as it’s medically known) is an ironically healing energy, while seeking expression through consumption is treacherously draining.  Our creations can even stand immortal long after our bodies decay, giving infinite longevity and inspirational reach to our identities.  In this way, through our self-honoring artistic expression, we serve our current peers and future descendants who receive our vibrations with resonance and understanding.  

I was hardly this meta-cognitive at ten years old, but I maintained a simple, yet strong, assurance that I’d discovered something important.  After my first summer playing this self-taught drumming style, I never looked back.  I shyly asked my parents to sign me up for drum lessons at Church Street School, and they readily obliged, delighted that I’d discovered a higher purpose through a meaningful creative outlet.  

In these lessons, my intuitive fluency was met with the double-edged sword of technical theory.  I wasn’t merely playing beats anymore: I was learning how they work.  Trading my blind and ignorant confidence for calculated and academic contemplation was a guaranteed consequence of my study, but luckily my wonder and awe persisted through my development.  I found a natural high, a giddy kick, in discovering a composition that I couldn’t comprehend; an even greater intoxication overcame me once the internet or a teacher illuminated the theoretical mess of tiny gears behind the orderly, ticking watch-face of every song I brought forth.  This curiosity pushed my playing into a proficiency I’d never imagined, and I quickly let go of all mourning towards the innocent cluelessness that characterized my first moments playing drums.  

By middle school, I’d become a caricatured embodiment of an indie-rock stan.  I donned band tees, plaid button-ups, skinny jeans, and Vans every day.  My thick, black, square-rim glasses were the cherry atop my chosen uniform.  Confidence in my artistic taste amplified my expression of identity, but my flavor-of-choice was met with much polarization among the Salk School of Science’s student body.  As its name suggests, my middle school did not attract many musicians; therefore, few were receptive to my romanticization of moderately alternative culture, save a group of core friends that shared my love for all the bands Jacob introduced me to.  We shared headphones and passionately exchanged song recommendations as we rode the bus to school each morning, but we couldn’t jam together, for they weren’t musicians.  

Church Street School’s “Rock The House” program was still my sole source of musical collaboration, but I longed for a creative bond deeper than the ones that my summer-camp coordinators were facilitating.  

My current reflections on this yearning reveal that my demand for others to meet me where I was, in all my indie-rock obsession, was quite unrealistic, but my naïveté obstructed this truth at the time.  So, my search for band mates remaining fruitless, I retreated to the isolation of my Battery Park City bedroom, where most of my middle-school musical creations occurred.  

My play-space consisted of a digital keyboard, a quiet drum kit with mesh heads, an electric guitar (which I’d taught myself to play), some effects pedals, and a looper stompbox.  The looper proved very liberating: by layering infinite ostinatos, I was able to turn my two hands into a symphony of sound.  As my prized possession, the looper started coming with me to all of Church Street School’s recitals, fundraisers, and block parties.  Making it the centerpiece of my performances, I grew more comfortable on stage as I bounced from drums to keys to guitar, improvising intricate collages of instrumental loops.  

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I hold such reverence and gratitude for the limitations of the TC Electronic Ditto Looper’s rudimentary technology.  It has but one button and one volume knob, which means that the compositions it aids are confined to simple, repetitive chord progressions of constant tempo; ensemble bands, by contrast, are able to move freely between sections and speeds.  But, given the unbridled excess which engulfs our society, such restrictions are crucial in driving creative decisions, lest option paralysis keep us stagnant.  When artists create arbitrary rules for their practice, they are forced to release the illusion of infinite choice.  As a result, creation becomes a cunning act of problem-solving rather than an unfiltered, directionless excretion of content.  A specific prompt is the best remedy for a blocked creative conduit.  We are disabled not by an absence of ideas, but by a fear of committing to one.  

Thankfully, I never second-guessed my looped compositions, my outfits, or any other facets of my tweenage expression.  But, in the spring of my eighth-grade year, a stimulus destined to forever change my perspective would come into my life.  One Sunday evening, I scrolled through the Spotify suggestions on my mom’s desktop computer in an attempt to procrastinate my weekend homework assignments.  The title and cover of one particular album captivated me upon first glance: To Pimp a Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar.  

Prior to finding this album, the music that I identified with was dominated by guitars, live rock drums, and (forgive me) whiny, WASPy protagonists.  I had no reference point for Kendrick’s masterpiece, but I nonetheless fell in love upon my first listen.  I hit play on the opening track and couldn’t bring myself to shut it off until the eighty-minute runtime was complete.  I scrolled through every lyric as the music poured over me.  Over the coming weeks, I replayed and replayed these songs until I had every word and note memorized.  Each listen saw me uncovering deeper truth and intention within the album.  I’ve never tired of To Pimp a Butterfly, still listening to it frequently, but I long to relive the chilling amazement I felt during my first listen.  

That was my introduction to jazz, funk, R&B, and, most importantly, hip hop.  The latter came to form the basis of all my anxious freshman-year small talk.  Bonding with new classmates over hip hop helped me navigate the discomforts of my big and scary high school as I attempted to make friends.  It seemed like everybody in my school was listening to The Life of Pablo, Coloring Book, and Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight in the fall of 2016.  Ultimately, this was the music that initially connected me to my band mates in LAUNDRY DAY, my musical collaborators for the next seven years.  

Although hip hop united us during our freshman year, we soon came to appreciate each of our respective niche tastes: indie-rock, musical theater, acoustic folk, and Britpop all helped comprise our eclectic music.  I could never bond over indie-rock with my band mates, but its sound subconsciously found its way into our songs regardless (Evening News, Don’t Blow Yourself Up, and Lawn all contain examples of indie-rock-steeped guitar parts that I wrote for the band).  The result of this melting pot was a style that saw and served a wide variety of listeners; teens and geezers alike were able to use our music as a mirror.  

Thanks to this wide appeal, we were performing for large audiences across the world by the eleventh grade.  The adoration we received from our supporters added a complex euphoria to the simple pleasure of creating music.  In the blink of an eye, we were running a business.  I’d dreamt of having a successful touring band since I first started playing drums, and I was finally living the fantasy.  It felt like destiny.  

With all this added attention, our creative expression encompassed far more than the songs we were making.  Online fan pages began posting about our outfits, and I consequently felt my taste in clothes gradually progress.  I started wearing bright colors and wonky silhouettes; the outrageous vibrance boosted my self esteem as it caught the attention of onlookers.  More artistic real estate revealed itself in the visual media of gig posters and merch graphics.  I leapt at the opportunity to design these images, enjoying the process immensely despite having minimal experience or technique.  

This ascension into interdisciplinary creation taught me the irrelevance of the walls created between artistic media.  Technical ability demands differing skills from medium to medium, but imagination is limitless.  Any time an artist stunts themselves by restricting their expression to their area of expertise, they become a technician rather than a creator.  Looking at the drawings of young children, I remember that emotion can be conveyed even in the utter absence of virtuous skill.  Hearing the songs they sing and stories they tell ratifies this further.  I find that my favorite artists maintain this adolescent imagination for life.  Every scraggly picture I paint, every wobbly step I dance, every strange meal I cook, and every amateur photograph I take leads me deeper into self-discovery — even more than my steady, reliable drumming could.  

Towards the end of my time with LAUNDRY DAY, however, I lost touch with the purpose behind my creations and contributions.  From my perspective, the collective goals of the band were moving towards commercial interests, with the ultimate goal of supreme fame and recognition.  My thoughts about the music we were creating eventually shifted from “does this make me feel something?” to “will this be a hit song?”.  I felt the intangible presence of concertgoers, record-label executives, and high-school friends in our studio sessions.  When we signed a record deal, these intrusions were only exacerbated.  I accrued several emotional scars thanks to music-industry intervention in the band’s creative process.  When middle-aged adults – with financial stakes in our success – gave us harsh criticism, my young heart bruised: was I making music for myself or for someone else?  Did I even want the fame and glory I was chasing?

Presenting art in a communal forum allows creations to become acts of public service, touching and inspiring receptive audiences.  But, while awareness of this opportunity has bolstered my love of performing, I’ve learned that any artistry with widespread impact must originate as an insular exercise of introspection.  Bringing perceptions of hypothetical audiences into creative processes invites artists’ inner critics to disrupt pure constructions of healing work.  We can control our actions, but not how they’re perceived.  Attempts to reverse-engineer desired reactions dodge honesty in favor of appeasement.  Considering this concept helped me reevaluate my artistic priorities and protect the boundaries of my practice.   

Miraculously, my discovery of yoga coincided with these difficult thoughts.  Each time I unrolled my mat and began to move freely, I learned to practice a new artform rooted in introverted improvisation.  My asana practice was solely for me, unseen by others.  Before long, my yoga studio replaced my recording studio as my new therapeutic sanctuary.  My taste gravitated towards music of spiritual worship: I was gripped by American gospel, Hindu prayer chants, and everything in between.   For the first time, I looked skeptically and cynically upon the materialist values prevalent in so many of the pop and hip-hop songs that I loved.  Doubting that my band mates would align with my changing palate, I made no attempt to inject my new perspective into the melting pot of our music.  This was my sign to step away from my band and reclaim my musical voice.  

That choice alone, emotionally turbulent as it was, brought me closer to my inner artist.  Suddenly, I felt freed by the infinite paths before me.  The ensuing period of transition resurrected vivid memories of my life before LAUNDRY DAY as a pre-teen, flannel-bearing hipster beginning to discover the wonders of rap music.  With a birds-eye view on my artistic growth over the past several years, I began to visualize an in-progress retrospective of my entire musical catalog, recognizing the diverse collection as a more honorable feat than any individual creation.  

In fact, all my favorite artists inspire me not only through my favorite works of their career, but, more importantly, through their journey.  Researching the upbringings, origin stories, and personal lives of my idols paints detailed images of their greatest masterpieces of all: their lives.  Creators filter and tint the parcels of their identity that they formally share, but excavations beneath the surface provide more truthfully realistic and beautifully flawed stories.  On a personal level, this mindset helps me find the romance in every mundane act, for my legacy will be the aggregate of every choice I’ve ever made, including momentous and inconsequential decisions alike.  As a result, rather than viewing all my present crossroads through the anxious lens of their future consequences, I am calmly grounded by the attempt to truthfully honor my complete identity through each move I make.  

Pondering this reminds me of my serendipitous interactions with Andre 3000, a gargantuan hero of mine.  I crossed his path for the first time in the autumn of 2018, as my family gathered at an outdoor table of a Lower East Side restaurant to break our Yom Kippur fast.  Andre floated past our table, meandering across Ludlow Street with bouncy steps.  I couldn’t believe my eyes.  His presence was unmistakable.  I froze.  Moments later, my paralysis lifted, and I jumped up from my seat to run after my champion.  Once I’d gained on him until I was a few paces behind, I relaxed my stride and feigned collectedness.  Respectfully calling out to get his attention, I expressed a brief word of gratitude and admiration.  To my surprise, he stopped in his tracks, greeted me warmly, and initiated a longer conversation.  His eyes were a beacon of patience, understanding, and confidence.  I cross-referenced his generously uplifting demeanor with the thoughtful intricacy of his recorded rhymes.  The presence he carried as he spoke with me on the corner of Rivington and Orchard congruently echoed his presence on the mic.  I was elated to witness this consistency firsthand, breathing the same air as a star I’d dreamt of meeting.  My next encounter with Andre occurred the following April, backstage at an Earl Sweatshirt concert in Los Angeles.  He immediately remembered me, and I was unexplainably touched.  Again, the sobering care of his actions reinforced the values that his music had instilled in me.  

Andre’s music, as half of OutKast, first found me when I was a high-school freshman on an unending nosedive down the rabbit hole of rap history.  His idiosyncrasies in music and fashion, which perfectly embodied his group’s name, validated my artistic exploration and gave me permission to unapologetically get weird.  Even his decades-long musical silence, beginning around the time I was born, taught me that I should sooner keep my mouth closed than express dishonest words.  Then, his re-emergence onto the music scene this past autumn also found me at a deeply significant time: his solo debut, the meditative instrumental album titled “New Blue Sun”, was released while I was studying the mid-twentieth-century spiritual jazz of Pharoah Sanders, Sun Ra, and John Coltrane.  Andre’s ninety-minute opus brought their lineage into the contemporary era, giving a voice to artists like me who sought a sound to contrast the fickle immediacy of the pop-music landscape.  It also validated artists scared to pivot their creations towards directions that reflect their evolving tastes but risk alienating their audience.  Many OutKast fans were furious that Andre’s new music lacked vocals of any kind, but this resistance didn’t abate his honest expression.  Thanks to New Blue Sun, I imagined a path forward on my musical journey that honored my passion for yoga and meditation.  My meetings with Andre provided context that further solidified his journey as my blueprint.  

The ecosystem of rap from which Andre comes favors youth and virility, but his flute playing sounds like it could have come from any flutist aged sixteen to sixty.  By picking up this ageless instrument, he brought lifelong durability to his catalog’s expansion.  Similarly, Pablo Picasso displays a profound delta between his first self-portrait and his last, but the incredible breadth and growth of his career is thanks to his medium of choice: paintings cannot fall victim to their painter’s aging process in the same way that, for example, a dancer’s creations can.  

Relatively speaking, little time has elapsed since my youthful musical origins; I hope that my creations can continue documenting my maturation well into my seniority.  Looking upon a lifetime of varied works from my death bed would be the greatest gift of self-reflection I could ask for.  

Another development in my life which has brought my awareness to the aging of artists is my journey as a music teacher over the past two years.  Employed by Gowanus Music Club and the Imogen Foundation, I’ve had the privilege to introduce dozens of elementary-schoolers to their first instruments.  The twelve-week-jam program I teach for Gowanus Music Club’s fifth-grade patrons identically mirrors the Rock the House summer camps I joined at the same age.  I’m so grateful to be in a position primed for paying my passion forward to the next generation of rockstars.  In each of my students, I see myself.  Daydreaming about their artistic growth makes me teeter with excitement.  

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By proxy, I often fight an impatience to know the progression and eventual conclusion of my own creative journey.  I dismiss these intrusive thoughts with the reassurance that this present moment is enough.  The abundant beauty I consume as I navigate this world far exceeds my capacity to translate sensory input into artistic output.  My finite, mortal energy may frustrate me and contradict my ambitions of prolificacy, but I am merely a human being.  The diction of this ubiquitous idiom is no mistake: we are not humans acting nor humans creating.  Simply being is a faithful fulfillment of our mission.  Our still inaction is inherently artful.  Although the desire to create is admirable, stagnancy must not be conflated with scarcity.  The entire universe is here with us at this moment, whether or not we do anything.  Rocky and imperfect as my artistic journey has been, my impenetrable perfection began the moment I was born, and will persist beyond my last breath.