Sif Saga - Expression: A Way of Being
When you hear a composition of chords on the piano, where does your mind go? Does it spark excitement in your frontal cortex, as you imagine 10 different ways the song could go and shuffle through thousands of words that can come together to evoke emotion or tell a story? Music is a powerful outlet, whether you realize it or not. A song can take you back, move you forward, or help you let out a good cry. This has been true for me throughout my entire life. I remember singing ‘The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow’, from the musical Annie, on the top of my lungs till my brother got so fed up with me he punched me in the stomach. To be fair, he did warn me. I just couldn’t help myself, it brought me so much joy that I simply didn’t care. That’s what music does. It evokes emotion and in that case, brought me joy and my brother irritation. As I got older, the singing on the top of my lungs in the car stopped, but my love for music never did. I took classical piano for many years, was in every musical I could be in, sang in choir and as I got older, this translated into me messing around on garage band and writing my first song. It was terrible, but I got hooked. There was something about writing the lyrics and making something out of nothing that created fireworks in my brain.
If you would have asked me a year ago where I’d be now, I wouldn’t have guessed that I would have 7 songs out and a bank full of music waiting to be released or sold. Last summer while I was in LA, my friend introduced me to a producer named AJ. I was excited to show him some of the music I had produced because I wanted to learn how to be a better producer etc… so we wrote a song, I wrote the lyrics and sang, and he produced. After that we wrote everyday for a month, song after song, it was like magic. I wasn’t keen on releasing music where I was singing but he talked me into it, so now here I am and I am loving every second of it. I’m finding those old parts of myself again, the parts that felt this need to belt out on the top of my lungs because it makes me happy. However, I get the most out of writing the lyrics. I would love to write for big artists some day. When I write my lyrics, I normally am writing them simultaneously while my producer is creating the music. The only way I can describe how I write the lyrics is this feeling like my mind goes to another world. I never know what the song is about until the song is done, sometimes it can take me months to realize the story behind the lyrics and it’s as if this lightbulb goes on. I like to call it subconscious writing but I am not sure that’s accurate.
Right now, I am working on my upcoming releases and two other projects with some artists. My life feels like it’s changing in front of my eyes. Every day, every month I feel more comfortable with myself, who I am, what I want to do with my life and music is leading me there. Expression is a way of being, it can be hard to remember that when there is so much pressure and “rules” within the confines of the human experience. I used to lay awake thinking about all the things I needed to do and worrying about if I had hurt this person’s feelings and so on, you get the point. When I am expressing myself, through music, modeling or acting it’s as if all that goes away and the more I do it, the more I am able to just be myself in my everyday life. The only person I should be worried about disappointing is me, and if you are truly being yourself, I don’t think that will ever happen. Life is magical, if it wasn’t for music becoming a soundtrack to my life I don’t think I could truly say that. -Sif Saga
