Mainland Roots

In Northern New Jersey (affectionately dubbed the “land of darkness,”) far from the sea and sun, I grew up in a suburb deep in the woods of Morris County- 5 minutes away from the last stop from NY Penn Station on NJ Transit- to a multiracial San Juan-born & Bronx-raised mother and a white Brooklyn-born & Long Island-raised father. On paper, there was nothing i had not or want not, in fact, i was extremely lucky to have access to well- resourced family and schools along with robust musical education and extracurricular programs.

As a Girl Scout (long live troop 80939!) - I was always very conscious of the subjective levels of justice & accessibility in both our community as well as the world as a whole. Having that foundation of values, standards, & commitment to making the world a better place while actively practicing it (through supply drives, community service projects, workshops with younger troops), was one of the lights that kept me going amidst the “land of darkness.”

I also had a double life; when I wasn’t in Girl Scouts or school, I was a professional chorister in many ensembles, including NJ Regions (Jr Regions Womens- 2016), NJMEA All-State (Mixed Choir 2017 & 2018), and All-Eastern (Mixed Choir; Pittsburgh 2018), along with 9 years in the New Jersey Youth Chorus with occasional solo gigs as well- as a classically trained Bel Canto soloist (shoutout Amy Shoremount-Obra!).

My singing career brought me all over the U.S. from Superbowl XLVIII with Queen Latifah (in the “marshmallow choir”- I was front & center but got mike wazowski’d by the cameraperson at FOX) to Chicago, NYC (Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall, Madison Square Garden), Delaware, Virginia, & more as well as internationally to Canada, Wales, Hungary, Austria, and most notably O’ahu & Maui in summer 2014… Back to that in a bit.

I was (& forever shall remain) appreciative & grateful for all these experiences- but i can say that even with all the accolades, success, and sacred experiences- a part of me felt unfulfilled, never satiated.

when all those experiences led back to the tiny, isolated, & suffocating four pale yellow walls of my bedroom, sentenced to stew in the unresolved pain of a (justifiably) angry land that was being developed & depleted by oblivious & trivially-occupied miserable materialistic people, along with generations of ancestral displacement while nothing was "really” going on in my life and not having the power to express that pain? i felt like a trapped failure- having to just observe injustice & unrest while imposing them on myself as i policed my expression to be palatable rather than true.

each night i lied awake, smothered by the swamps of sadness of the “land of darkness,” silently crying & praying for freedom; not only for myself, but for everyone. i never wanted anyone to feel the pain i felt- both my own & the collective pain, & i wanted to be able to do something about it.

you see, i never felt my truest emotions were something to be expressed openly- forget processed- so the only times i let them out were when i was channeling them into my performances on-stage or in rehearsal, advocating for others/championing other causes through my club activities & Girl Scouts, debating in class, or through creative writing, or my art, or my time out in the woods up the block, or nature.