Since I was 6, maybe, 7 I have heard my dad say “I do it because I have to, not because I want to” in Spanish of course, English is not his first language and frankly I’m proud of that. What I hold no pride in, however, is doing things because I have to and not because I want to. Don’t get me wrong I understand we all have responsibilities and things we simply have to take care of but early in my life I cemented the idea within myself that if I was unhappy doing something I would not be doing it for long.

When I was 15 I attended my first live concert… Panic! at the Disco a band that by all metrics should not have been playing a tiny sports bar in Bakersfield, California of all places. There they were though, and there I was, with my crush at the time. We had gone simply as friends in fact we were being chaperoned by her older sister, Laura. I remember every thing about that show and night from the clothes we all wore to the setlist the band played and the coming of age feeling I got in my stomach and my chest.

When I was 16 I went to my second concert ever with my best friend, his girlfriend, and a friend I was only just getting to know. Travi$ Scott (he had the dollar sign in his name still back then) was playing Club Nokia (a venue that has lost it’s name to buyout and is now known as the Novo) with Young Thug and Metroboomin, names that were only just beginning to form relevance but that would follow me for the next 10 years. That night changed my life and my view of the melodramatic suffering I was so convinced was tearing me apart (little did I know that is just the way life is after all).

It is not Music that I am pursuing it is that feeling… the memory that you can engrave in someone’s vulnerable mind. Life hurts you and beats you down and if you let it like I constantly do it’ll keep going. Every couple months though I make my way to a show that just like the two I’ve touched on here helps me forget the things that keep my hands in my pockets and helps me raise them to the sky, or rock my shoulders left and right, or cause me to lose control.

I want to pursue a career in music because I want to take part in an experience that helps people feel alive in a way they can’t outside of a venue with the lights low and the volume high.