“I Dared And it Came True, living for real... living for real” Blog part 2 - On the Precipice of the Single and Album Release completing the Trilogy Depo LB Series
The music video for my upcoming Album/Single I Dared was released in November 2022! It's available today on my youtube. Directed by Eric Norcross, his vision of the song highlighted the 'daring to dream' vibe of the song – which was one layer. But Eric's work is always so deep, and multi-dimensional. His imagery captured a deeper conflict hidden in the song that I don't even think I was aware of when I wrote it.
The video features scenes of me in both NYC as well as a secluded historic house, surrounded by nature on Staten Island. Through the push and pull of city verses nature, he also personified the struggle of the artist to remain true to their vision rather than conforming. It's so tempting to compramise your vision, in order to ensure success and receive validation.
It's such a lonely road – that road less traveled. But then again, our own spirit of authenticy is the most natural path. It's linked to the intuition that pull us back to ourselves like gravity; like we've returned home. Like returning to the tonic again and again.
The struggle of the true artist is also echoed in the other video he directed for me, Let It All Krumble. In that video, he brought to life yours truly as a Muse to inspire a lonely painter who was just about to give up on his dreams. He had received yet another rejection from the official art world.
In that video, he showcased nature verses city life as well, but through harsh images of the Gowanus Canal– a body of water desimated by pollution. Once again, he expressed a layer that I never communicated to him - the story of redemption. Gowanus being a superfund site now is being rehabilitated. As gross as it still looks and smells, the locals reassured me that it's much better already. The geese being in the water is a good sign they hadn't see for decades. That rehabilitation is exactly what my own vision of art and music are about, my own journey - healing and redemption of our very lives through our creative power.
This power once reclaimed and mastered can be used to rehabilitate and redeem ourselves and as an extension - our world. A world that is on the brink or as some would say, already in WWWIII. It is with a sad heart today that I write this today, almost 3.5 years after I released Eric's video of I Dared. I have to confess, I just haven't had the gumption to release this music officially after the video. All this time has passed, I don't know how? Who can relate: the past 5 years have been so strange!!! One world crises after another.
And now... WWWIII.
The news I've gotten today regarding Iran would be enough to say that there are more important things to deal with than to finish this blog, post the vlog... maybe best to just postpone it again. I don't have a live show lined up to celebrate. I've been too busy with work. Still not back in the groove of the music scene. And I have to crame this week to get all the ducks in a row for a release on Sunday...
But this is what keeps happening. There's always a reason these days to not release it. I've sat on this valuable music for too long. I just haven't dared. Honestly, I've been in conflict.
You'll see in the 2 vlogs I wrote on my youtube how and why I laid out of live music the past 5 years, when that was SO much of my time and energy. It had become a bit of a rat race for me, a treadmill I couldn't get off because the opportunites kept coming . We are taught in the Music Biz to never pass up ANY opportunity. It's the only way to make it – live desperately! Live and breath only for that opportunity. Be ready for it. Just stay in the race, and one day you'll win. Maybe.
But this goes against my spiritual goals of rising above the lower vibrational mindcontrol of competition. What about expanding into the frequency of abundance where there exists plenty for all. We all have a niche. What is yours can never be lost. What is not yours, can never be gained; no matter how hard you work. No matter what you sacrifce. No matter how desperate you become.
Desperation in itself is a low vibration and actually ends up repelling higher vibrations.
We vote for our future based on how we spend our now... not just what we are doing, but what mindset we are in; how we are vibrating when we are doing it. Same is true about getting into fear regarding all these wars, pandemics, world threats... we lend our creative powers to the things we allow ourselves to imagine, to focus on.
On 6/22/25, when the music video was released, I had been out of that rat race for 2 years due to covid putting any end to all the opportunites coming my way. And truly, I was ready to let go of all that had been in conflict in me; the world vs my spirit, nature vs. city, authentic living vs. need for validation.
I was thankful for being in the music industry the way I had been. Being in the scene for over a decade had forced me to grow at a rapid rate. And it's arguable that I needed that motivation to become the best musician I could become. I used the challenges I faced EVERYDAY to grow up, and grow in character.
“New York has raised a woman, where once a girl was”
But I knew I wanted something different now. I thought I was ready to release I Dared album with the video and move on... so why did it take another 3.5 years?
I originally came to music to heal myself. My music is not for entertainment. I've studied and intuited the true power of music to tranform your life alchemically – whether you listen to it, or more potently create with it.
Though I had already healed so much through the creation of this trilogy series, there were still old ideas, old indentities, old programs that needed to be dismantled through more shadow work. Who can relate?
The past 3 years have brought up the last remains of resistance I have to living the life that is mine and mine alone. I won't share all that here. Maybe another post. But I'm glad I allowed myself the gift of not knowing, not forcing the release on my agenda and trusted where my life was leading me instead. A lot of things didn't make sense at the time, but now in hindsight – on the precipice of releasing this – I see the Divine Timing once again! I was being led through my faith to untangle very deep programs in the best way possible for me. Though my life has detoured away from music as my central focus, it's brought me to a place of internal freedom which was always the first reason I came to music. It's the reason I made this convenant to create these 3 albums – to heal.
I no longer have to be the center of the story. Sweet spoiled girl has grown up. My entitled, narcissistic tendencies have gone belly up. I've done the work to shine holy light on the wounds that were keeping me enslaved, tangled up, and split minded.
Much of the conflict was coming from being trapped inside my own mind of outdated programs, running automatically. I needed to step in my authority and clean house. I needed to let go of so much baggage that I didn't even know I had! And I wasn't allowed to release the last album til I did the work. Spirit is just so clever. And so kind – there could have been much harsher ways to face some of the demons I've faced these past 3.5 years.
All those years in Brooklyn, working my tail feathers off – it did distract me in some ways. It did keep me so busy that I didn't even notice the conflict between the way I was living and how I imagined I could live. Just get through the next gig, the next project, the next school year...
I made a promise to myself and God a long time ago to do this Triology Album Series. But it was always a co-creative effort and so I needed to wait for His Divine Timing. No matter what rages on in this world, I trust in Him. And so the album is coming out this Sunday, come hell or high water. Since I'm currently in NYC – could be both.
I Dared was not just about pursing the worldly dreams such as playing and teaching improvisational music in Brooklyn. It's about using your creative power to live the authentic life that is only yours to life. To play your part as best you can in the Symphony of life. To be aligned with the good of and beyond this world so that you are not contributing to heartache. If you are only looking out for you and yours, you'll compramise. But instead, you can grow into the role you were born to play, in a story bigger and grander than you can imagine – the human story of redemption. His Story.
I've let go of so much. My world has changed so much. But I'm still daring to create my life the way I think it should be, not the way that I was programmed to create it.
Ironically, this has led me to let go of many of my agendas and embrace my role as a Child of God. And I'm 'unapologetic for the choices I've made' – because they led me home. I return to the Tonic again and again. I don't find major scales/keys boring at all. I'm tired of the minor.
It's a long journey, much longer than even this Triology series has taken me, but releasing this album is symbolic. It's the intentional letting go of all that came before, to make way for the new season emerging in my life.
A little more about the Album and the Depo LB Series:
My First album I ever recorded was called Becoming Aware.
I recorded it at Alta Vista Records in Austin, Tx only a few years after picking up the piano and song writing. Stephanie Mo Morris (an angel no longer with us on this earth) played clarinet and sang some harmonies. It captured that time in my late 20's, not long after my spiritual awakening. Becoming Aware was seeing the world for the first time. Like I had been asleep for my whole life up to that point.
Now this was before I went back to study music officially first in Montreal, then Paris. (More on this in I Dared blog 1)
When I was in Paris studying Music, I was finally able to spend time in the Musée D'Orsay. Impressionist are my absolute favorite, I don't care what sophisticated art culture says. Long story of how it took my 3rd trip to Paris to finally get to stand in front of the original Monets housed there. I stared for hours and hours. My sister was very patient with me.
Soon there after, in my little Monmartre apartment, I painted (in one night) the 3 paintings that, many years later, would serve as the covers for my Depo LB trilogy.
What is a Depo LB – something I made up actually. Just like the reverse release (explained in Vlog 1). In the middle of the NYC hustle, it was all I could afford – to make a cross between a Demo and an EP. The LB stood for low budget. The vision I had was to release a trilogy of my originals with very low production costs. I would arrange in Logic Pro, have the vocals professionally recorded.
2015 Reach Up – the first album – was produced by Casey Holford. He recorded the vocals, mixed and mastered. Ellia Bisker (of Charming Disaster) did backing vocals. I did the rest. It was an album that was about getting unstuck from the lower frequencies that are the norm in this world. I had Become Aware of the invisible prison of bad vibes that keep us stuck.
Now I wrote songs about reaching up consciously in hopes and faith of healing traumas, getting free of things holding us back. After Becoming Aware, it was acknowledging that effort was needed to embody the light I had found in my spiritual awakening.
2018 All Love – the 2nd album – was produced in the same way with one exception: the title track was produced by Colin Hua. It's an album about the joy of realizing how much we are loved. It's about basking in the higher frequencies of hope for the Kingdom to come. It's about the intimacy I discovered in an all powerful God. The paradox of omnicience, and personal at once. It's about living as His child. It's about the struggle to stay there once you've experienced this cause low vibes and agents smiths lure you back the low vibes time and again.
I Dared 2025 – the last album – is about embodying that love. It's about the backbone you need to stand in truth.
And as I write this, I understand why this was so much harder to release this last one. So much of my life was just lived in ideals. But the work of living as love and light in this world – it takes so much moxy. It's taken 7 years to muster the courage, as well as walk the walk – not just talk the talk. If we really want to live for real – it can't just be in our own head. We can't be ok with being hypocrites. We have to do the honest and hardest work of looking in the mirror.
‘Now the Lord is Spirit, and where there is the Spirit of the Lord, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.’ 2 Corinthians 3: 17 - 18
The love has to be embodied. The love has to be shared. The love has to be lived.
That's the only way it counts.
We have to put our money where our mouth is. We can no longer allow fear to make our decisions. We can't use our past, and the traumas we hold as an excuse.
We have to Dare to become who we know ourselves to be – beyond this fallen world.
I'm fulfilling a promise this week as I humbly offer this album to inspire and help others on their journey home. We do need each other as we walk in faith towards our redeemed future.
Though things look bleak, I dare to have faith in the Redemption Story of Humanity... I Dare to play my humble part.
I Dared – 6/22/25 on all major streaming platforms.