What started as a distraction is now what adds color to my life. At the beginning of the pandemic, in the post-eighth-grade-graduation limbo between middle school and high school, I made the unexpected decision to start learning the piano. Progress was slow and, at times, frustrating. There were moments when I questioned why I had started at all. However, five years and 138 original songs later, songwriting is everything to me. Over the years, it has allowed me to process my grief, delve into new forms of artistic expression and develop a body of work that is representative of my soul. Songwriting has laid the groundwork for how I cope, grow, take risks and express myself at Emory University. I would not be half the student or person that I am today without it.
The first song I ever wrote followed my grandmother’s death in December 2020. I poured my grief into the piano and onto the page, using music to tell the story of her life and all that she taught me. The catharsis of that experience was almost too great to put into words. As I told her story, my heart somehow beat differently. When I sang my own words, I heard hers once again. I hoped that history would not repeat itself, but last semester, I lost two more grandparents. Each loss brought an achy breath of grief, and each memory of them was a punch in the gut. Going about my day, attending classes and trying to integrate myself into a new community was harder knowing I would never see two of the people I loved most ever again.
However, just like the first time I lost a grandparent, music arrived unexpectedly and grounded me when I needed it most. One morning, I woke up with a thought fully formed in my mind: I needed a piano. I was still relatively new to campus, so I was not sure where the music practice rooms were or if they even existed — but I was determined to find out. I threw on my clothes, slipped out quietly so as not to wake my sleeping roommate and made my way to a practice room in the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts. The practice room available to non-music students was in the basement and housed an acoustic piano. I sat there for three hours and wrote two songs. By the end, I felt more present and grounded than I had in weeks. Becoming a college student and living away from all that I was used to had changed the way I processed grief, but music was still there for me, waiting patiently down the street.
The piano in the Schwartz Center has been in my life ever since then. Writing music has always been one of the brightest, most beautiful parts of my life. But, it was not until I punched in the door code for the first time and tucked myself into the tiny corner of the warm basement room that I realized just how much of an escape songwriting truly is. Now, I regularly block out time in my busy schedule to write music. Even when I tore a ligament last semester and was resigned to the slow, agonizing torture of hobbling to and from my classes on crutches, I kept my scheduled time slot. Hopping my way across campus and into the Schwartz Center elevator, I let the hour-long writing session distract me from the blisters on my hands and the bulky black boot strapped to my leg. I was not a music student, nor had I yet pursued any music-related extracurriculars, but finding that piano was pure serendipity.
Songwriting quiets the discordant chaos that my life sometimes falls into and smooths my jagged edges. Being a college student is one big exercise in adapting to change, and I do not know if I would have responded well to the many changes of my first semester of college had music not been in my life. In a way, that Schwartz Center piano is more than a distraction — it is a confidant. It is a vessel through which I can pour out all my fears, frustrations and concerns and receive the gift of my story on the paper before me. In the future, I plan to keep the musical peace that I have found at Emory in my life, and I have even begun writing a musical on that very piano. I have not performed an original song live since I have arrived at Emory, and it is my hope that this will soon change. Either way, I know that my love for songwriting is not going anywhere. And, when the noise gets just a little too loud and my days get a little too packed, I know that the acoustic piano will be sitting in the Schwartz Center basement, waiting for me to sit down at the bench, rest my fingers on its keys and exhale.
Contact Olivia Stanley at orstanl@emory.edu.
