Get inspired.
My mind is always reeling. I am a multi-tasking wizard. I’m a wife, a mother of a wild toddler, a business owner and I have a full time job (luckily, it is producing music).
Often times, the things that once were the most central in my life, get pushed to the back burner. In my case, that would be my original music and songwriting. Sometimes I forget I am even a musician. Did I just say that out loud? Well, type out loud… You get my point.
It all started with a dream.
I have the most bizarre and vivid dreams, almost on the daily. Last night, I had a dream that my college roommate from The Berklee College of Music (Sarah), called and left a lengthy and obscure voicemail. We haven’t spoken on the phone in 5 years. I haven’t seen her in 10 - how did that happen?
In the dream, she had just written a song on the piano and was singing it to me on my voicemail wondering if I had any feedback. From there, we got together and somehow ended up in her parent’s old house that I used to visit in New York. We were painting the halls of her old house with bright red flowers and it was just like old times.
I woke up today feeling odd about the dream. I picked up my phone and texted her. “Sarah, is this still your number?”…she quickly responded. I wrote her a text saying I had a dream about her. She wrote me back. “That’s beautiful and strange. I actually have been giving out flowers to friends and just wrote a song last night on keys”.
So, we re-connected on the phone. Funny how 10 years can go by and you can still feel like you have just seen an old friend yesterday. She showed me the red flowers that are sitting on her desk by her keyboard on facetime when we were talking. Weird. TECHNOLOGY!
The point of this long drawn out story is that through this reconnection with Sarah, I was inspired.
She is now living in Brooklyn and is a performing musician/songwriter with her band LipTalk (check em out).
We talked for a while and came to the agreement that we would have a songwriter’s challenge where she will record an instrumental of an original piece and send it to me and I will do the same and send it to her. From there, we will record vocals and write lyrics to each other’s song. The beauty of today is that you can do this all online and collaborate with musicians from across the country.
Do it.
I am mostly writing this down because once I share this with other people, in some odd way I will feel more committed to doing it and you will be my witnesses. Having a deadline or someone that is waiting to hear from me helps me allot time to focus on my creative projects. I’m looking forward to sharing our collaboration with you.
Sarah and I in our old apartment, circa 2003...Boston, Mass.
Reach out to an old friend for inspiration! Whether it be a musical collaboration, a writing collaboration, art, video or whatever it is that you’re into. Most likely, that friend is also looking for inspiration.
Now, onto writing that song….