Thomas Kelley

It's funny what four years of music school will do to someone. After studying voice, piano, theory, history, and composition, I have never felt more like playing music my own way. It's as if I spent 10 years learning about music just so I could do it completely different, in a way they don't teach in school; a way that more traditionally causes a raised eyebrow from academics than applause. I started playing guitar when I was 15, and the diary of my musical life follows as such. I learned chords and cover songs from ages 15- 17. When I was 17 I discovered crushes and tried to figure out what love was through song. I hurt friends through ignorance and tried to patch together the words of apologies through simple rhymes. At the age of 18 I moved onto to college and began my pursuit of music education and at the same time tried to break out of the repetitive ventures that were my songs. At 19, I fell in love for real and tried to write down on paper and catch in melody the way I felt. Fell out of love at 20, I think I managed to hit every branch on the way down until I fell into the open arms of a friend. At 20, I fell in love again, for real, again. I painted pictures of summer nights and mistaken identities from my mouth to hers. I figured out the way sound could travel from my head to my heart on the tip of my tongue. At 21 I watched her fade away and with it the passing of love I began to explore my writing more intimately to the point that I found myself to be an open book. At this point, I am 21, I have loved, I have hated, I have laughed, I have cried, I have laid beneath the stars waiting for one to pass by on a cloudy night, and I have sat in the silence that is an empty room. I have been too honest, and I have lied, and at this point I want to be able to write it all down and sing it to the world, and I hope in some way my losses and gains will be able to touch someone I don't even know.