Photo courtesy of Julian Bracero

It was my 25th birthday, March 22, 2020, when I felt the world stop. COVID-19 lockdowns went into effect in New York and my depression swallowed me whole. Reading felt impossible, my doctoral applications gathered dust and even the thought of turning on the television revolted me. In those early months I was restless and searching for something, anything, when I noticed my very neglected guitar sitting in the back of my closet. It was in the first moments of trying to sing and play, while being absolutely atrocious at both, that I felt more calm and certainty than I had in months and I figured, why not try to learn something new?

Before then, music had never been my art. An avid consumer of all things music, yes, but my prior creative endeavours had been quieter. I had wanted to be a painter, and even attained my Master’s in Fine Arts. In those years, music was a companion as I painted and studied but never a language I thought I could speak. I deemed myself too anxious to ever do something as bold as getting on stage. I had never even been able to sing at karaoke.

Yet, in the colder months of early lockdown, something shifted. The loneliness of the pandemic extinguished all my previous creative outlets, leaving me as a hollow echo of someone I once thought I was. Music suddenly became the only thing that made sense. I wrote my first song. I called it “Dead Air” and gained the courage to sing its raw melody over the only three chords I knew to a childhood friend, a seasoned musician and music teacher, over Zoom. He immediately started urging me to write and sing as much as possible, and that encouragement changed my life.

That summer, he brought me to local outdoor open mics. I felt immediately welcomed into a community of artists with a warmth I hadn’t expected. The art world I had come from had been cold and competitive, and here I was suddenly surrounded by people who lifted each other up. I found more and more of myself in the music I was writing.

It was through this community that I met Billy Rymer, who heard me sing and immediately wanted to work with me. To have an accomplished musician believe in me became a tangible pillar of my new reality. Billy and I became fast friends and ended up working together on a few projects before Billy introduced me to Michael, a plucky and optimistic bassist. Michael invited me to start writing and singing for a new project he and Billy were starting; a project which we later named Atomic Life.

As I reflect upon it all now, I can’t pinpoint exactly why music found me during lockdown. Maybe it was the immediacy of playing - the way it demanded my whole self in the moment. Or maybe it was always there, something I secretly carried around below the surface of myself that was jostled loose that spring. But what began as a desperate grasp for peace has become my anchor, my voice and my home. Those first tentative notes played on a dusty guitar led me to where I am now, no longer too afraid to try, even when my voice shakes.