Blast Off.

Running away with the circus.

My sister’s high school performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream wasn’t my first theatrical experience. I’d seen The Nutcracker a few times and was brought on a couple of trips to Broadway. I’d been in several holiday plays at church along with the children’s choir. At school, choir was also mandatory along with general music classes and an introduction to ballroom dance. I’d performed in piano recitals too. But there was something about this high school play that made something click for me. 

It was more complex than anything I’d ever done personally but it wasn’t so beyond my own comprehension as seeing The Lion King on Broadway was. I could see students dressed in black moving set pieces on a dark stage. I could hear the hum of the spotlights when they turned on in the booth above me. I could see the student maneuvering it. I could identify what the costumes were made of. I could hear the delay in the mics turning on. It was the first time I had seen past the performance and into what I would later understand was the production. I left school that night wanting to know how everything I had just seen really worked. 

That happened in the 4th grade, my final year of lower school. And it would be in the following four years - my time in middle school - during which several key things would happen that would lock me in on the path I’m still on today. 

It was May 2005. My mother and sister weren’t home. My father wanted to see a movie but didn’t want to leave me at home alone so he took me along for the ride figuring I might get some enjoyment from it. We arrived at an AMC theater and entered a lobby full of monks. Naturally, I asked why the movie theater was full of monks. 

“They’re Jedi,” he said. “You’ll see.” 

I think the only way to describe what happened to me in the first few minutes of this movie before any dialogue had even occurred was a complete decimation and restructuring of my brain. I understand that eleven-year-olds might be easy to impress, but being brought in to see Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith changed my life. It was the opening crawl. It was the music. It was the choreography of these ships gliding toward some type of space horizon before diving into the biggest battle I’d ever seen.

And by the end, with the bad guys victorious, I was distraught yet simultaneously amazed. I was talking about this movie the entire drive home. Then as we walk back into the house he casually says, “Do you want to see the next one?” 

“THERE’S MORE OF THESE?” I screamed at the top of my lungs. 

From there, I went off the deep end. I went off the deep end so badly that when staying with my grandparents out in hardcore rural Georgia that summer, my grandmother got so sick of me running my mouth about Star Wars that she banished me to sit in a corner and keep my nose in my bible. But even when reading the bible, I’d just be comparing those stories to things I’d seen in Star Wars. My grandfather thought it was a riot and humored me with a Star Wars sticker book he found at the dollar store. 

That following school year when the Star Wars CD soundtrack was still my most prized possession, I became aware of the existence of rock music and became almost as obsessed with Linkin Park as I was with Star Wars. The knockout moment was when I was gifted their Live in Texas concert DVD by my friend’s cool British dad. I spent more time picking apart any and all behind the scenes details I could of that concert than I had trying to parse out the elements of a John Williams score. 

Yet again the following school year, in flipping channels I happened upon WWE’s Friday Night Smackdown and what appeared to be a simple wrestling program quickly played out into a full on drama before my eyes. I called for my mother, not believing a wedding had been interrupted by some type of gang that beat up the groom and this other man had just been tossed clear out of the ring through the Spanish announcers' table and she told me to calm down, that it was fake, that it was all staged. But the arena going dark to reveal an undead man emerging from a cloud of smoke called the Undertaker didn’t seem to be fake at all to me. 

Somehow within the walls of a fairly traditional household, I had developed a taste for spectacle and wanted to be a part of it. My parents allowed it, seeing theater as a good hobby to get involved in so long as it didn’t interfere with my studies. The plan for me was to become an engineer and work in a place like NASA or Lockheed Martin, get involved with space travel or weapons manufacturing, doing something with my life that mattered, my father always said, displays of eagles, the American flag, and the Twin Towers behind him in his home office.   

I threw myself into writing music and using my limited drawing skills to sketch out otherworldly things that could be brought to life on stage or screen, and upon entering high school signed up to be tech crew for the fall musical as soon as I could. I couldn’t wait to learn how to work a power drill and show up to tennis practice afterward covered in sawdust. I couldn’t wait to build the inside of a mansion befitting of The Sound of Music. 

I walked in that first day to a room full of boys and a male teacher from the boy’s school. 

“Set painting doesn’t start until next month,” the teacher told me. I showed him my form detailing my name, class section, and advisor. 

“I’m here to build sets,” I said. He took the paper and walked away. I stood by myself until he called all the other students over. 

We took a walk through the shop but all the boys already seemed intimately familiar with it. They’d had classes here throughout middle school while over on the girl’s campus, we were taught how to sew, knit, and paint. I approached the teacher after everyone else had been dismissed to ask if there was a cheat sheet of sorts for me to learn about all the different types of materials and tools we’d be working with. 

“No, and I don’t have time to teach you separately. If you can’t keep up, I’d suggest coming in next month for set painting and costumes. That’s what the girls usually sign up for.” 

I got home that night and explained to my father what had happened. He laughed at first when I said I didn’t know the dimensions of a 2x4 (spoiler alert: it’s not 2 inches by 4 inches). He said not to worry about it. “Guys are just born knowing this kind of stuff.”

“No, they’re not. They had shop classes all during middle school and it’s not my fault that we didn’t,” I said. Once he realized I was serious, he brought me down to the garage and gave me all the basics for not losing a hand or an eye. 

Over the following weeks, none of the boys ever wanted to work with me. At first, failing to drill a screw in flawlessly the first time had the teacher taking it out of my hands complaining about how I was ruining his drill bits. The boys seemed to be allowed plenty of mistakes. Eventually, I just took the tools and started working on smaller things off to the side. I’d heard the teacher say we needed to make a small wooden ramp for backstage and after he cut out the pieces for it, I put it together myself. 

As the set grew bigger, I was the only one small enough to fit into some of the tighter openings to further reinforce something. Soon, the boys were impressed that I’d seemingly mastered the drill gun and I was one of a few who weren’t afraid to climb a scaffolding up to the theater’s ceiling to hang the necessary lights for the show, my father’s wrench that I’d been practicing with in hand. It was still a huge relief once it did come time to paint sets. Finally, I could relax and create art with other girls, something I’ve described before as something that always felt very intimate to me. 

By the time the following year rolled around, the boys ignored me the normal amount, not acting offended or surprised that I was there in the first place. The teacher trusted me with the tools enough but still didn’t invite me to a weekend get-together where he and the rest of the boys fixed up a golf cart that would later become the most impressive thing we’d build for Grease. My mother told me not to be too upset. “I wouldn’t have let you go to a man’s house anyway.” 

Telling my father that I wanted to go to school to study the music industry rather than engineering was like telling him I’d robbed a bank and was on the run from the feds. I’d done fairly well in all the extra and advanced physics, calculus, and statistics classes. I’d won a medal at a science fair. My PSAT scores were lacking but my grades and extracurriculars made up for it. We’d been lining up engineering schools to start visiting. I’d done everything I was supposed to do. But I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering what would’ve happened if I hadn’t, in his words, “let hobbies stay hobbies.” 

I was given permission to apply to exactly one music school. It was all or nothing. As mentioned in Lucky, I applied early decision. I hadn’t prayed that hard in my entire life.

The email came on the evening of December 15th, 2011. 

I got in.