For May Flowers, the blues always started with the rain. Not the kind that simply wets your coat, but the kind that seeps in between your thoughts, under your skin, into your bones. It rattled rooftops and whispered riddles down alleyways. In this town, the month of April never washed anything clean. It just stirred up the sediment. Confusion and mental noise kept her living reactively, letting the outside world direct her feelings like a maestro with no sense of phrasing.
May was used to chasing ghosts, missed notes, wrong turns, and broken rhythm. The kind of mysteries musicians lose sleep over. She thought she could solve them with enough practice and theory. But this case was different. This one was personal.
The Sound That Got Away
A few years back, on an April afternoon, as the sunlight spilled across sheet music in a conservatory studio, a metronome clicked with relentless precision as a young professor, Dane Joyce, stood beside a grand piano, his posture as rigid as his pressed shirt. He tapped the lid.
“Back straight. Chin slightly lifted. Shoulders relaxed but not slouched. Support the breath from the diaphragm, not the chest.”
The student, barely 18, thin and trembling, stood at the center of the room. “I feel discombobulated,” she said, hand pressed near her heart, “like my body is behind the music. I don’t know how to explain it.”
Dane raised a hand to stop her. “Feelings don’t matter without form. Good singing is precision. You can’t express anything if you’re not in control. Chin up, forward thinking, remember your proper positions, and try again.”
She nodded, defeated. Her eyes dimmed slightly as she took a ‘proper’ breath.
“Now,” he shouted, “sing the phrase. Start on the breath, push from below. Do not raise your shoulders.”
As May began the song, her thoughts about her body had her muscles tangled in tension. The notes were clean, clear, and correct, but to her, something was missing. May finished, eyes hopeful.
Dane’s critique was immediate. “Too breathy on the second line. The jaw is too tight on the high note. And you’re not opening the soft palate enough. Let’s try again.”
She tried again. And again. Each time more controlled, more hollow. Less of her.
Rich Soil is Full of Fertilizer
Before a voice can bloom, it must brave the dirt.
That May, her flowers were far from blooming, and she found herself in a pub, drinking a Coke and eating peanuts, when suddenly she heard an angel, and an April full of criticism was shot down in May. Colors crept in like a memory returning from exile that day May Flowers heard Bobbie Bloom sing for the first time. She didn’t think. She just sang. And every note whispered truth. She didn’t need to explain. Her music melted May’s mental maze with its presence, and her performance revealed a secret. We don’t “think” our way to the truth. We feel our way forward. Bobbie does not look for the feeling in the physical body, but rather in the feelings and emotions conveyed through the music. Music motivates the physical body into action with its rhythmic flow and fills the room with a sense of presence.
With her sound and soul, Bobbie said, “You’ve been trying to drive with your eyes, sweetheart. Let your gut steer and let your heart hum.”
May didn’t know she had a voice until she stopped trying to speak in perfection using her body, stopped shouting over the song inside her, and stopped believing The Thinker’s commentary was the script. It turns out that the blooming begins the moment we stop battling the brain and start listening beneath it.
Back to the Present Purple
The lights were low as the sun began to set, and the air was thick with the smell of scotch, stale jazz, and something old and wounded. The Purple Note wasn’t just a club but a confessional with a backbeat, a velvet-cloaked sanctuary where souls undressed themselves under purple neon.
Max the Hat was carving up the rhythm like it owed him money, and Scarlett McQueen’s voice was dripping like warm molasses over the mic as her fingers glided across the piano. Then the door creaked open, letting in a slant of sunlit sorrow, and Xandar walked in with a guitar case slung over his shoulder like a burden he’d finally agreed to carry.
An Ego Falls at The Purple Note
He didn’t smile. He never smiled, not unless the universe played a good chord. That’s when he saw May Flowers and smiled. Fresh out of the conservatory, she still believed technique was everything. She had dreams sharp as stilettos and twice as dangerous. He could tell May was here to play, learn, and find something more honest than applause.
Xandar could see with his ears that May was a player. When she sang, she wasn’t missing notes, but she was missing the music. This gal had the voice, the sound, and the technique down, but no soul. She’d been overthinking, lost in the maze of her mind, second-guessing the inner beat. Xandar knew the feeling.
Xandar’s Presence
Once, his mind was a maze, a labyrinth of thoughts, questions, and distractions. The music, a distant whisper, struggled to find its way through. He had lost the joy of playing, entangled in the puzzle of reaction, analysis, and the relentless effort to think his way into feeling. His identity was a mirage, obscuring his freedom to simply exist, to just be, and to play as it should be.
May slid onto the stool beside him at the bar and smiled, “You always walk in like you know something the rest of us don’t.”
Xandar smirks as he orders bourbon, “Kid, knowing isn’t the problem. Thinking you know, that’s where the trouble starts.”
“You’re talking about the ego. That big, showy wizard behind the curtain?” May asked, squinting her eyes.
Xandar nods slowly, “Bingo, baby. The ego dresses up in gold robes and smoke tricks. Talks a lot. Loves mirrors. But when you pull the curtain back, all you see is an old machine, crankin’ out doubts and second guesses like factory work.”
Sounding slightly unsure, “But I need that part of me, don’t I? To push, to compete, to be better.”
Xandar took a big sip and looked down into his glass. “The ego doesn’t want better. It wants to be safe. Wants you stuck in the image of who you think you’re supposed to be. But music? Music doesn’t give a damn about that. Music wants your truth, raw and trembling. The ego wants perfection. Music wants presence.”
Musical Magic with Scarlett and Max
Max hits a wrong note just then, but Scarlett rides over it like a wave. Xandar nods toward the stage.
Xandar smiled toward May, a big smile as if he had just seen a rabbit pulled from Max’s Magic Hat. “See that? Mistake. Real one. But nobody flinched. Why? ‘Cause they’re in it. No time to judge. That’s what the ego hates. It can’t swim in flow.”
May leans in, “So, how do I drop it? The ego?”
Xandar takes a final sip and stares through her like a mirror. “You don’t drop it. You see it and catch it whispering, ‘You’re not good enough.’ Or shouting, ‘Be the best.’ And you say, ‘Thanks for the input, Wizard. Now step aside. I’ve got a song to play.”
Xandar taps his temple. “It ain’t about erasing the voice. It’s about realizing you’re not the voice. You’re the one listening.”
The Trio of Temptation
Suddenly, the stage lights shift, calling him forward. Max the Hat gives a tip of his fedora. Scarlett smirks over her shoulder as Xandar stands, guitar slung low like a gunslinger.
He turns to May one last time. “You wanna make real music, kid? Let autumn be your teacher. Let go and let the leaves fall and the ego die a quiet death beneath the trees.”
He walks into the spotlight, leaving her in the hush. For a long moment, May sits there, feeling the weight of her curtain. Then she hears it, not a thought or judgment, but a pulse, steady and quiet in her chest, the voice beneath the noise, and she smiles for the first time all night.
The Sound Beneath the Silence
The last bit of sun poured through The Purple Note like a quiet solo. These days in May were getting longer, and the sense of time blurred as nights and days mixed. Xandar was tearing up the stage with his back to the door. He wasn’t speaking in complete sentences, but picking at them. Each motion from his guitar felt like a whisper from another world.
And Scarlett? She was at ease. Elbows swinging low, fingers like smoke across the piano. Jazz and joy in equal measure. The harmony between Xandar’s guitar and Scarlett’s piano was palpable, uniting their melodies into a single, enchanting performance. Then, Scarlett invited May to the stage with a wink and gave her the sign to sing.
May Flowers entered like a question mark. Scarlett turned to her with a gaze that could slice through static.
“You’re still listening to yourself sing, aren’t you?”
May froze. “Is it that bad?”
“It’s like you’re trying to read a book and write it at the same time,” Xandar chimed in.
Scarlett sighed, “Your brain’s got too many tabs open, darling.”
Then, Max the Hat smiles and adds, “You can’t be on stage and in the audience simultaneously, sweetheart.”
One-Way on a Two-Way Street
The brain is impressive, but it’s not a multitasker. It can send signals (giving mode) or receive them (receiving mode), but cannot do both simultaneously.
When you tell a story, your whole body becomes a part of it, with facial expressions and hand gestures naturally following the energy generated from the narrative. You’re not consciously planning those motions. You’re fully immersed in the story, in a state of giving. However, when you’re interrupted by a question, your focus shifts. The brain starts to receive instead of give, and your momentum breaks. Music is another form of storytelling and works similarly, with interruptions affecting the flow of the melody.
It’s crucial to stay in the giving mode to play music easily and tell the musical story. This is where the magic happens. Once you start thinking, deciding, or questioning, your signals blur. The phrase falters, the tone weakens, and the flow breaks. Paralysis by analysis can strike at any level. But it only takes one thought to keep it simple: the musical idea. Think sound. Think phrase. That’s it.
A Hug from The Trio
May sat down in the middle of the trio, and Scarlett began to play, simple, slow, deliberate lines. Xandar followed, wrapping harmony around the melody like a warm scarf.
“Now,” Scarlett said, “don’t sing. Just hear it. Hear it in the place where it already sounds right. Inside. Where the sound is full yet unspoken.”
May closed her eyes. The music wasn’t asking her to do anything. It was showing her how it wanted to be. She started to hum.
“There you go,” said Xandar. “You’re not singing anymore, you’re being sung. The music tells us all we need to know.”
And then they stopped. The silence afterward was more alive than the sound that had filled it. Scarlett looked at her. “That’s the sound beneath the silence. It’s not made by muscles or technique. It’s made by letting go.”
“Sing from your soul,” Xandar said. “The body’s just the hallway. The music already knows where it’s going.”
May was learning not to force the phrase, learning to trust the tug of tone and time. She felt that the moment sound wasn’t pushed, it was pulled from within.
Done with Doubt
May Flowers was ready to bloom and sing. She was done with doubt, not thinking, but trusting and knowing. If the voice came back, not singing a song, May had learned she was in control and could make it sing. The rain of thinking hadn’t stopped, but it didn’t matter. She’d make it sing until the mind remembered it was her servant and stopped its bucking. May wouldn’t live under its control anymore. She had found the music inside the storm.
With music inside, screaming to come out, her muscles could move without instruction. The middleman had to let her go, and her voice sang before she knew the tune, long before her ears were involved. It wasn’t magic. It was memory—deep memory, muscle memory, heart memory—the kind that doesn’t need to be told what to do. May had become the song, and the song had set her free.
