Bryce Avary: A Role Model

Happy Friday! I haven't learned a thing today, so I thought I'd talk about Bryce Avary.

Bryce Avary, also known as The Rocket Summer, is one of the two people who most inspired me to teach myself piano and finally get (back) into music at the rather chaotic age of sixteen. Bryce Avary (and Alison Sudol, also known as A Fine Frenzy) saved me.

Sixteen, for me, was the beginning of huge changes in my life. I went through a lot st sixteen. In early 2008, I fell in love with "My Typical Angel" as I lamented my oh-so-tragic "lost love". Soon, I was searching through CDs at Best Buy to find The Rocket Summer. Having fallen in love with both Bryce's piano-driven rock and Alison Sudol's much more ethereal piano music, I started teaching myself piano that same summer.

And then my entire world was turned upside down: a friend of mine, who had been like an brother to me while we were in school together, committed suicide, and whatever semblance of faith in God I had left was completely shattered. Piano, The Rocket Summer, and A Fine Frenzy were the only means I had to cope with and try to wrap my head around the death of a friend.

I clung to Bryce's music especially that summer. He had all the faith I didn't, all the faith I wished I could still have. But I knew I would never be the same; my faith was forever changed at sixteen: first utterly destroyed, and then slowly brought to life as a different kind of faith through Bryce's own faith.

And boy does Bryce Avary has faith. He questions God, questions life and meaning, and through it all, he continues to have faith. I hated God, hated Christianity and Christians for lying to me my whole life, but here was this Christian who I could not hate. I could not believe God, but I could believe in Bryce Avary. On my darkest days, Bryce Avary's never-ending faith could still somehow light my day.

Bryce Avary pushed me to believe in something greater than myself, to believe that I was important and owed it to the world to be the best I could be. I don't believe in a God who sits up on a throne in the clouds, playing puppeteer or even simply watching, but I do believe in something: humanity. That every person is capable of good, of being "saved" if only they can believe.

Music, and not just Bryce Avary, has completely changed my life. Because it is art, and art is the universal language, the language of our hearts. When I was 16, Bryce Avary showed me the kind of person I wished I could be. I grew weary of dark, fearful, faithless hate and longed to instead fearlessly light the world with love and faith.

Bryce Avary plays every single instrument in his music: guitars, piano, bass, drums, and vocals. He writes it all and makes it all happen. And he's been doing it since he was a teenager. Maybe one day I'll be able to do that too.

Bryce Avary, you are my hero. <3

Tingling Souls

I love music. I have loved music my entire life. I was singing and dancing and making instruments out of the world before I even left the womb. My childhood was spent discovering every sound I could possibly make. I joined choir when I was 5, and sang my way through years of musicals in elementary school. My dad and I tapped out beats together at the dinner table. I was staring about 500 different bands. And my eight grade choir was by far the coolest choir my classmates had ever seen.

And then high school happened. Maybe it was hormones. Maybe it was the divorce. Maybe it was public school. Maybe it was nothing at all even, but I stopped making noise. There was a period of my life in which I barely had any kind art, especially music, in my life, and it was the most unhappy period of my life.

One day, my friend Daniel Zlotorowicz (Yeah, that's a shameless plug to his music page.) handed me a CD and told me to listen to it. So I did, and it changed the course of my life forever. (cue dramatic music) The CD was One Cell in the Sea by A Fine Frenzy.

I loved it. We went to see A Fine Frenzy that April, and it was one of the best days of my life. I decided to teach myself piano, and, that summer, I sat down at the piano bench, set up whatever sheet music or piano tabs I could find, and slowly started translating all the scribbles and letters into music.

I love music. I finally joined my high school choir (for my final semester), and I've rediscovered how utterly relaxing it is to stand up on stage and just sing. I know not everyone feels the same, but it's what I spent my childhood doing; it's like going home.

I love music. You can pour your heart and soul into it; belt along with your favourite song, and it somehow takes a little of the weight off your shoulders. Playing music, writing music, is just as incredible; when you lose yourself in music, it opens up all the floodgates of emotion and lets everything free. Like when your leg falls asleep, and you suddenly use it again, and all the feeling comes rushing into your leg, tingling and pricking.

We let our souls fall asleep, and music wakes them up.