When I was a young boy, I loved to sing. 

I don’t know when it started, but like many children who care to do so, I would sing with wild abandon, whenever the mood struck me. It was casual and spontaneous.

I’d like to think it had to do with my introduction to the Beatles, Christmas of 1994. It was my first true musical obsession, of which many have since followed.

I even managed to get Ms. Moses, our elementary school music/chorus teacher to incorporate Let It Be, In My Life, and Imagine into our songbook presentation for whatever 5th-grade chorus assembly was coming up the pike. Upon reflection, it was one of the first times in my life when I lobbied for something that I really cared about.

The Beatles movies A Hard Day’s Night and Help! followed. I made guitars out of wire hangers and round paper plates, taped together, which was my closest approximation to Paul McCartney’s 1961 Hofner Bass. I made a drum kit out of a variety of things including two-liter plastic soda bottles. This way, when I watched A Hard Day’s Night, or the promotional film of John Lennon doing Instant Karma on VH1, I could mimic playing along to the band when I sang. 

Was I any good? Most likely not. It didn’t matter though.

All that mattered was the passion for doing it, because it was fun. There wasn’t an ounce of self-conscious worry. When I look back, I never thought I wanted to be a singer in any kind of way. There were no aspirations, I just liked the way it made me feel, to express myself.

One day, I was singing in some kind of way, and an adult related their experience to me about when they used to sing when they were young. As I grew to learn, when the subject of music or singing arose, this was a self-deprecating anecdote the Adult told humorously in mixed company: As a child, this Adult sang into a tape recorder. They did this because they thought they had a good voice and wanted to hear how it sounded. When they played back the tape, they were shocked and embarrassed by how they thought they sounded and never sang again. 

That kid grew into an adult, and then that adult told me as a child that I too did not have a good singing voice. It was not done in a mean, spiteful way. There was no malice. That adult was probably doing what they always did, and related their self-deprecating anecdote and tacked on that I too, was in the same boat.

Truthfully, they were probably right on some level. In my attempt at honest yet biased self-appraisal, I think to a certain extent I am tone-deaf. To this day, I remain unformed and undeveloped in these areas. Additionally, back then, I might have lacked the proper motor skills and adolescent focus needed to learn guitar because of my ADHD. I didn’t have a strong core, I had poor balance, I was clumsy, and most of all: I had no motivation.

It wouldn’t have been impossible though, because I did learn how to ski at an incredibly young age, and I got pretty good at it. I was positively encouraged and even given lessons. To this day, I can go years without being on skis and still hit double diamonds after a day or two of warming up. That will probably be a case of continued diminishing returns as I grow older. I digress.

I don’t remember feeling hurt or sad about what the Adult had told me, I just listened and took it in. I kept happily playing along with The Beatles. I even tried my hand at a few musical instruments and washed out pretty quickly, for the reasons mentioned above. But I didn’t stop singing. I continued to participate in the chorus as it was academically required by the school, but any notion of actually being able to sing outside of that was purely something that I did in solitude, for my own amusement.

Because I cannot actually sing. I am not a musician.

Apart from singing, I was also writing poetry. It was your typical little kid sort of fare, but much like the singing, I enjoyed doing it and I was pretty prolific. It was easy to write prose. Poetry can be a lot like painting, it’s effortless to Jackson Pollock some words in the same way it is to splatter paint on paper and find art in the swirling random chaos, where meaningless coincidence is just as much of an author as your untrained child’s eye. 

I got older, and I watched as all my friends formed bands and played covers in talent shows. I always wanted to be included, but I watched it lovingly from the sidelines as a spectator, as if it were a sport. Which in itself is funny, because I detest sports, especially watching them. But I loved the idea of theatricality: Of getting on a stage and having all eyes on you, while you get lost in your musical expression.

Those friends eventually graduated from talent shows and cover songs to gigging around town in pubs and teen centers before finally getting to play shows in New York City, including the long-running music showcases at the world-famous Punk Rock Mecca, CBGBS. One time, I was so worked up when the band was playing I Wanna Be Your Dog by The Stooges, that I jumped up and grabbed one of the three mics and sang the chorus. I couldn’t help myself. It was embarrassing, and I cringe when I think back on it, but it was also thrilling. It came from an innate, unfulfilled desire to express and perform.

I continued to gravitate toward music, but I never participated, because I cannot actually sing. I am not a musician.

That didn’t stop people from asking me if I was a musician. I’ve heard it for years - decades now. People assume that I must play music because of the way I dress and carry myself. Or maybe it’s all the enthusiasm by way of air guitar, which is practically nonexistent these days.

When I do get asked, I am flattered. I always laugh, and joke in a similarly self-deprecating way about the fact that I cannot actually sing and that I am not a musician. Instead, I would explain that I am “musician adjacent.” It started with my friend's band, where I would carry gear, and make fliers as well as album art/layout stuff. I think I might have cared about it just as much as they did, and it wasn’t even my band, nor was I a member, despite always wishing and wanting to be. 

That adjacent interest eventually merged with my love of video and filmmaking and became band/music videography. One summer, when that band from high school was recording their first and only album, I was right alongside with my camcorder to document the process. It was a logical extension of taping the band’s live shows, and that in turn evolved into directing, shooting, and editing all sorts of music videos. 

At its peak, I found myself touring across Europe and the United States documenting a Horrorpunk band on their farewell tour. We traveled from Moscow, Russia to Santa Cruz, California and I got to experience what road dog tour life was like. Weirdly, it was like being a pirate, thirsty for adventure and travel. It was also a nightmare, but that is another story. I am glad for the experience. I am also glad that I will probably never do it again, once was enough.

It wasn’t until I started really making films that I began to find the confidence within myself and truly tried to outwardly express the songs that I was writing… all along.

Yes. You heard correctly.

Despite all of this business of not actually being able to sing, and not being a musician, I started to write lyrics and melodies. I don’t remember when it began, but it was something I would do, for my amusement. I didn’t talk about them or share them. It was embarrassing, like jumping up for the Stooges song at CBGBS. I would burn them into my brain, where they would stay, in some cases for over a decade. How was it that I could somehow write songs and melodies, but I wasn’t a musician?

Anytime I did anything musically, I made sure to include a preamble disclaimer:

I cannot actually sing, I am not a musician.

Since I first started live-streaming and podcasting on the internet, I always made sure to let people know this fact when I try to talk about music in any way, shape, or form. It is like I have to say it. Because I am so scared, so terrified that someone else will. But if I say it, if I own it, then no one else can tell me what that adult told me when I was a child. I made this belief - this truth, into a reality. It is something I have reinforced in myself over and over. 

I cannot actually sing. I am not a musician.

A friend from that high school band ended up going to NYU to get a degree in audio engineering. Over the summer of 2006, we all lived together in an apartment on the Lower East Side, on 3rd Ave and 11th Street. Sometimes this friend from the band would record fun little demos with the drummer of the band. I’d watch and learn as he’d layer vocal tracks when he sang. He’d do three: One would be a higher pitch, one would be a lower pitch, and one was right in the middle. And when he played it back, his voice thickened in the most wonderful way. It sounded stronger, more powerful!

Eventually, I decided to fire up GarageBand (which came with all Mac laptops) and started recording little musical demos. I didn’t like how they always sounded, but I frustratingly loved the process. I loved experimenting, even if it wasn’t very good. It was the same joy that I felt when trying to make movies.

I can barely keep time with the handclaps. The vocal harmonies/arrangement are ideas that floated in my head every time I listened to these Misfits Static Age songs. I finally decided to experiment. These were done 10 years apart.

All of my creative motivations and endeavors were encouraged by inspiring, nurturing indie filmmakers who embodied the same punk rock spirit as all of my favorite bands. The tenacious idea of picking up some gear, instruments, whatever it is, and making something creative. To just go out there and do it, and do your best while doing it.

I didn’t really try though until I started to listen to Nobunny, the rabbited alter-ego of the now-disgraced musician Justin Champlin.

I was enamored with the concept for many reasons. Nobunny was something that didn’t take itself seriously, instead aiming to get out on a stage and jump around in underwear, proto-dad-bod belly out, and have fun with simple, catchy, bubblegum punk rock. It was so wonderfully silly and lovingly stupid. From 2010 to 2019, I never missed a NYC show. 

Justin’s vocal range felt casual and achievable! He sang as Nobunny with such confidence and self-abandon. It was in this that I started to write more and more songs, lyrics, and melodies. It was that same spirit that so many others must have felt when they heard the brilliance of the simplicity of the Ramones for the first time - when the band hopped in a van and Johnny-Apple-Seeded their way, city to city, town to town. 

If they can do it, then maybe I can do it too. 

In the spring of 2010, while visiting my little brother in college in Tucson, Arizona, we sat down with his acoustic guitar and worked out one of those songs I had floating around in my melon. It was magical and surreal. I had managed, with help and encouragement from my brother, Steven, to go from merely writing lyrics and melodies to actually recording them.

Steven is a fantastic songwriter, singer, and guitar player, and he might be an even better skier. When he was younger, he took guitar lessons, practiced, and developed his musical potential into musical ability and talent. And now, here he was helping me explore my musical potential. It was always there, perhaps, waiting for permission from some outside validation to come out. In some alternate reality, I could see us brothers banding together and hitting the road to tour on music that we wrote and recorded together.

The song we did was little more than a simple exercise in home demo recording on a laptop. It’s the kind of song that you write when you are first trying to get something out. It’s nothing special, but it is my song!! I wrote it!! It came out of me. The guy who doesn’t have a good voice and can’t sing. The guy who is not a musician. I did the thing!!

Sometimes these songs would materialize through the films I was making. Nick Bohun who helped produce my first feature film Romeo's Distress is also a fantastic musician and artistic nurturer who has indulged my occasional desire to track and record music. We tracked three or four at this point.

This was a Yolks song Nick and I did in 2020, the vocal arrangement incorporates elements of Nobunny’s take as well as the original. When the news broke shortly after, I decided to not shoot an accompanying music video. A few months ago, I finally uploaded the song to YouTube.

It had been so frustrating, for years, to have these songs in my head, and no way to express them. On rare occasions, when I am not distracted by the many other artistic endeavors that I have chosen to prioritize in my life, I attempt to get a song out. I probably don’t prioritize these rewarding, creative pursuits, because I still feel that I am not a musician and I cannot sing. But today, that doesn’t stop me from dropping everything I am doing and singing into the digital recorder right on my cell phone. Sometimes it's humming a melody, other times, there are lyrics. But whenever I get an idea, I make sure to record it. I don’t know what I will ever do with them all, I just make sure to record them when they come.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I kick around the idea of perhaps learning the ukulele and getting proficient with the kazoo in a way where I can flesh out these recordings so that I don’t need another musician to indulge my musical curiosities that refuse to be stifled.

One day, I may have enough songs recorded to put on a record! Like an LP. That would be a wonderful achievement. But I am also in no rush.

I don’t fault the adult who shared their thoughts with me as a child. I am not a victim, I deserve no sympathy. That is not why I am sharing all of this.

No one is at fault here except for one person: Myself. Because I listened to it and I believed it. 

I allowed it to shape my own identity and my ability. 

I let it dictate what I was or was not capable of. 

I never allowed myself to see beyond what felt like reality and ascend beyond it. 

I’m all grown up now, and I have different artistic and creative goals, and as I mentioned above, those are what I choose to prioritize.

Today, when I reflect on that adult’s self-deprecating story about singing into the tape recorder when they were a child, I begin to wonder…

Perhaps they didn’t have a bad voice at all. If you sing with your naked, probably unguided child voice into a tape recorder, it’s likely not going to sound great even if you have some sort of musical potential. However, it may sound better if you layer your vocals, like my friend did at NYU.

And that’s the thing about potential: Lots of people have it. But it needs to be gently encouraged and nurtured, even if it’s not great. It has to be tempered in that way so that it doesn’t bend or break under any doubt when it is hardened and toughened by years of consistent effort, practice, and failed attempts. From there, it can emerge in its final form and guide you to express your creativity through it.

As anyone who has tried to go down a slope knows: No one is going to naturally ski without falling again and again.

That child, who turned into an adult, probably didn’t have anyone to encourage them to think beyond the conclusion they had reached about themselves. How many times did it take for it to be reached? Was it just one time? Multiple times? 

A lonely ego without any confidence is a very tragic thing. No one wants to be alone. It’s better to go out and recruit others to join you in your misrey.

Like I said, I don’t feel sorry for myself. I’ve sort of come around at this point.

But I do feel sorry for that person.

I feel sorry that they used that insecurity to project and impact other lives.

What if it had been the opposite them?

Perhaps, a life unrealized.

How sad.