Here's to Music.

    We've all felt it. 

That moment when you're driving in your car and the music is up all the way... the beat of the bass so strong it feels as if its your own heartbeat. In that moment when the sound fills the air around you, it seems to seep into your pores and absorb into your very soul. That rush is one of my favorite feelings in the entire world. In that short moment, its as if time is suspended and all of my bottled up emotions are set free... and as I'm filled to the brim with an emotion I can't really describe, I feel as if I'm on top of the world. As if anything is possible.
     Music, I am hopelessly addicted to you. My entire day today revolved around you, and if I think about it, most of my life has too. Since the time I could climb onto a piano bench, I've been absolutely fascinated by you, by that feeling you give me. When my self taught prodigy of an uncle would move his fingers over the black and white keys in a cataclysm of sounds, I would sit next to him with hands that could not even write yet and wish so badly that I could set my soul free through music like he could. When my grandma gave us an old upright that my parents put downstairs,  I approached it with determination. Little did I know that some of my uncle's talent had been passed down to me, and I remember sitting for hours and teaching myself how to read music and how to play. I was 5 years old, stubborn, and wanted more than anything to be like Mozart. Well, I definitely didn't develop anywhere near his talent, but I was able to play his music shortly after. For some reason I've always been able to hear something and then just play it. Just feel it and do it, just like that. When I got lessons then came Beethoven, Debussy, Aerosmith even as well, and soon my teacher told me I was playing at a college level in 8th grade. 

    And that was all great to hear, but my favorite was just sitting down at the piano, all alone, and writing. I had an old cassette tape recorder that I would record all of my songs on.. it to this day has hours and hours of child Lauren simply playing whatever chords and melodies felt good at the time. Piano was my first love, and the only thing in life that's ever come natural to me. No matter what had happened at school that day, no matter if girls were mean to me or I didn't get the grade I wanted, no matter if I didn't get the part I wanted at dance... piano was my escape and I always felt happy there. It was the one place I could go and know that I was understood here, good enough here, safe here. It has always been the one place my thoughts would disappear and where I didn't have to try.
   I loved playing in the dark and my mom would always find me downstairs, tell me I was going to get horrible vision and turn the lights on. I always played it off like I was just too lazy to walk over and turn on the switch, but in all honesty, there was something magical about trusting my fingertips to recognize the keys for me, something about hearing and feeling the music without the sense of sight. Sometimes I'd even play entire tarantellas with my eyes completely closed. I'd get lost in that for hours. 
    I began to crave that  feeling of absolute freedom and began dancing. The studio became my second favorite place in the world... it'd always have the music up loud and there I got to defy gravity and push myself to the point of exhaustion and in those moments I'd feel that same rush. We'd all feel it. It was there as we waited backstage with the lights down, nervousness buzzing in the air. It connected us together when we danced.. it was a kind of magical feeling that would come about as we were moving together, spinning and leaping and expressing in sync, a kind of peaceful hush that would come over everything... and then disappear as quickly as it came about when the song ended. It was bliss.
     Today I got the chance to feel that rush again, on the same piano that I first sat down at. And I know that this entire post is a bit of a rant, but it felt so good, so natural to have everything pouring out as that indescribable feeling coursed through my veins again that I simply had to write about it and remember that moment, because I feel as if college has started it has been so rare for me to get to go back to that place. It's the one place where I feel more like myself than anywhere else, and I've missed it terribly. I ache for it everyday I'm without it. 
   So for everyone reading this, I encourage you to take some time to indulge yourself in that one thing that makes you feel invincible. Whatever it is that has that power to soothe your mind, take you home regardless of where you are, and inspire you simultaneously, never give it up, no matter what it is. Hold on to that rush - it's one of the things that makes life worth living for. You were given that love, that talent for a reason.

Music, I owe you a big thank you. 

Yours truly,

Lauren

Dream Audaciously.

The other day I had a thought.
 If you were to look down at the world, before your life had even began, and were talking to your fellow not yet existent friends, what would you imagine for your life? Would you say, "Man, if I were alive, I would go to school, be average, go to college, graduate, get a good job, be middle class and have some fun along the way."? Chances are... no. Most of us, if given the chance to have this detached perspective of our own circumstances would perceive them in the daydream kinda talk we usually do when saying what we would do if we were to win the lottery, make it big, or any of the many thoughts we've entertained ourselves with over the years. I, for one, wouldn't sit up there and wish to be mediocre. I would look down at our world and think one thing: I want to rock that place. I want to live so passionately, so fearlessly, so out of the lines that society will draw for me, that an adjective would have to be created to describe the kind of life I lived when my time is up. I would want to be remembered, not for something self glorifying, but for creating such inspiration, such impact... for having ridiculously big dreams.. and then fulfilling them.
That is what I would say.

 Then, I had another thought... why am I NOT pursuing this path wholeheartedly? It may be crazy, but who is to say I, who is to say WE, can not all accomplish this?
At 19 years old, and a freshmen in college, life right now is probably more confusing that it has ever been. With the grind of tests, lack of sleep, and constant planning of my future, the most logical thing for me to do is to fulfill the requirements set up for me, do what it takes to get my law degree in human rights, and THEN start helping the world. Yet another good life, but in a lot of senses, a safe life... a medicore life. Ahh, mediocrity. My worst fear and the enemy of greatness. 

 I am Lauren Miller. I am crazy, I am ambitious, and I would like to stop waiting, stop planning, and start changing the world... NOW. This whole cookie-cutter plan for my life that is being shoved on me is rather a bore, and I would like to do something extraordinary. So I will do just that. It may involve some dangerous world adventures, extra hard work, and a little luck, but I dream of going after what I've been told it is unreasonable to dream of. Starting today, I am doing just that. If we all did this, man, what a different place the world would be.


As I hear that little voice who gave me a wake up call, I realize that I was put here with potential, for a reason. We all were. And it's time to reach with determination and reach high. Higher then a lot of people may expect me to ever go. Well, to those people: watch me. Yes, I dream to the stars and beyond even as my feet are attached to the ground. Luckily, I'm willing to learn how to fly.

Borders - a poem.

Small lines on a map, is that what it comes down to?
Borders making "order" of the world that surrounds you
Taking sides, building pride, getting rich, taking lives...
Not the kind of order on which higher purpose survives
But the truth is that the borders really start in our minds
It's all a head game, made of numbers and divides
Sometimes all I wish is for the world to hit pause-
11:11 rolls around, I frame my hopes in a clause...
Let love foster selflessness, and from there understanding,
Then comes peace-
Why are we so demanding?
Millions of kids today, dying of AIDs
But we say we can't do much, they cost too much to save...
Says the CEO driving home in his Escalade.
Huh.
Something's wrong with that logic.
Pretending we don't have a cure when we've started to solve it
Holding out 'till we can find a way to make a bigger profit
Equating human lives to a bill in my pocket
I can't buy something new from helping you, so your life? I'll rob it.
Humanity.
We share this.
Brotherhood?
We don't.
It's messed up that's the difference between "will" and "won't".
What would happen if we re-wrote history, took out war, put in compassion
If we create a different past, would we have different action?
Would the ones who follow us eradicate hate?
Or argue that this learned emotion is part of our fate...
Excuses-
Yeah, well, I'm sick of them all.
See,  all they ever do is build us up to our fall.
Maybe to you this is all just a set of rhymes.
Idealism and naivety, all arranged into lines.
But I refuse to resign-
 I believe we can win.
Believing in the confines of our sin... this locks us in.
My lines aren't like those of the borders we create,
Realism isn't truth; hope isn't fake.
It's all what we make of it- whose sake we fight for
This life is more than money, more than pride, more than war
Forget greed, forget me, forget you, remember humanity...
Cause if our decisions now are sane, then I don't believe in sanity.

Dedicated to: Uncle Tony. I never met you because AIDS took you away before I could, but you'll always be loved.

Inspired by: Jeffrey Sach's article in the Economist, which shed light on the fact that rich countries(such as ours) could find vaccines for AIDs,malaria, and other devastating diaseases claiming millions upon millions of lives in underdeveloped countries... yet we have not. Why? Because the countries that need it lack the ability to pay us a price for them which we could profit from. I find this horrifying. How is this at all ethical? To withhold technology and let millions of fathers, husbands, sisters, mothers, and children die or be orphaned because they are unable to pay the steep prices proposed.. it's not ok.

Calling for: Change.