You are the keeper of a dream. Maybe you were lucky enough to be
born into a family with a dream. Or maybe, as in my case, the angels of music
came down and spoke to you. I remember standing in our driveway in Kansas, hearing
the amazing music of the angels through a transistor radio: “Oh yeah, I'll
tell you something, I think you'll understand. When I say this something, I want
to hold your hand.”
I was never the same. There was no turning back. I wanted whatever
was coming out of that radio. Teachers and other grown-ups would come up to me
and say: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
If you want to be a performing artist, you are labeled “strange.”
You go through school, knowing you’re a little different. Hopefully you
find an instrument that you can put this feeling in, this emotion in, as you grow.
Living the Dream
When I was eight years old, I tried out for band. I wanted to play
the drums, but was told “Girls don’t play the drums.” So I picked
up the clarinet, and I started to learn the language called music—with notes
that go after one another and create this amazing sound.
I would go home and receive my inspiration from the radio and records
my parents and my sister had. Thank God they had good musical taste. My parents
would bring home Simon and Garfunkel’s amazing album called Amazing
Grace. I bathed in the amazing music of Aretha Franklin. Music was a way
to communicate with my family. We didn’t have much to say as we listened,
but we could feel the same way. I would take tennis rackets and jump around. I
made my friends play band with me: “You’re the drummer, you’re
the guitar player, you’re the other guitar player.” They would put
up with it for a while then say, “I’m going to go ride my bike.”
I just wanted to listen to records. I was considered strange because I was the
keeper of a dream.
I also learned to play the guitar. My father brought a guitar home—I
thought for me, because, of course, he had to know how insane I was about music,
but no, he brought it for my older sister. I begged him for one, but he said,
“No, an eight-year-old girl can’t play the guitar.” I showed
him.
My guitar teacher, Don Raymond, was a jazz guitar player who had
lost the fingers of his right hand in a horrible accident and played left–handed,
still amazingly well, on his gorgeous jazz guitar. I was terrified of him, and
I wanted him to think I was good. I practiced until my fingers bled—and
I gained his admiration and his respect. I remember him tapping his foot and saying,
"I don’t care what notes you play, just don’t ever go out of
time.” He introduced me to jazz and other kinds of music.
Eventually, in 1979, I enrolled in a contemporary music college,
Berklee College of Music, where I could major in guitar. I arrived in Boston straight
form Kansas, and I walked into my first classroom. Suddenly I was surrounded by
these amazing musicians, wondering, "Where have you been all my life—you
who share my dream of music, you who have been blessed with this amazing gift
of music? Here you are playing for hours, just as I love to do, and playing better
than I can play.
For a semester and a half, I sang and wrote music and played in some
restaurants around Boston. But at least I was singing for people and making a
living at music.
I called my parents and said, “I know you put a second mortgage
on your house just to send me to college, but I’m gonna stop going now.”
I went to Los Angeles to take my dream of being a musician—a
successful musician—as far as I could. And I wanted to write and sing my
songs.
In the meantime, life was happening to me. Music can be very powerful.
It can overcome your life. But you need to realize that you are in the middle
of your life right now. You are here and now. This step that you are taking, this
day that you are in right now, be in that. We have so many dreams. We live our
life in dreams. I spent so much time thinking about what would happen when I got
there, when I got that Grammy, when I got that record deal, that I didn’t
spend enough time in the right now. That’s where life was happening.
Life Beyond a Job
When you are the keeper of an artistic dream, you feel a lot of pressure.
Your parents—bless their hearts—have their own dreams for you. They
want you to be a doctor or lawyer and have a “real job.” When you
insist that you are going to be a performing artist of some kind, they say “at
least go to college.”
I’ve learned that there are many levels of success in whatever
art you perform. If you want to be a singer or dancer, then be that—and
be truthful in it. Do what moves your heart. Don’t fake it. You can tell
when someone’s trying to take the magic of music, but it’s not really
coming from their heart.
There is a lot of great talent out there. And so you have to keep
improving to stay in the music business. I have lived it now for 25 years. I have
always said that when I get “there,” I’m going to celebrate.
There is no “there.”
Walk this path, believe it, and always be in your truth. Whether
you are singing, wrapping your arms around your instrument and playing it, listening
to it, mixing it, or trying to figure out the best way to bring your music to
the world, that is the truth. That is what the world needs today.
Now be it. Bring it. You were given a gift. You were chosen. For
you, success is not measured in money or fame. Believe me, I have had both, and
I am grateful, but money and fame do not bring the satisfaction that makes life
feel whole to me. It is knowing that I can put my truth into music. Every time
I have made a choice to speak my truth, to be in my truth, I have been rewarded.
Be in your truth, be in your light, be in your love. Go out there
and be the performing artist that you are. Be the keeper of the dream. PE
