When I met Alejandro in September 2021, I had come back to music after over a decade of silence.

Up until then, I'd put all my creative energy into writing books. I'd published two novels, both of which got great reviews. But around the time my second book came out, my publisher told me my debut hadn't sold as well as they'd expected. As a result, they couldn't take a third book from me. I pushed myself to write a book anyway, and my agent took it out on a wide submission. Everyone rejected it. Underneath the frantic drive to achieve, I felt empty. I was wearing away at the edges.

Luckily, I was going to therapy. As I worked through my feelings of failure, I started to talk about music.

I was born singing. From a young age, I had melodies in my head. I was always writing songs. But I started singing lessons when I was nine, and my music teacher sexually harassed me on and off for four years. I was a child, and I didn't understand what was happening. I didn't tell anyone. I kept singing and I kept writing songs, but I had this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. In 2007, I enrolled for an undergraduate degree in music. I was consumed by anxiety. I felt sure I wasn't a "real musician." I dropped out and switched to a degree in literature. I threw myself into words.

(Of course, music kept cropping up. I married a musician, and we made a few songs together. I sang at a couple of weddings. But nothing ever gained momentum. Whatever happened, there was this silence that swallowed everything.)

I'd gotten so used to music not being in my life. The way you get used to being hungry. The way you get used to being lonely. When I started playing again, all the feelings rushed back in. This beautiful thing--this thing I'd loved all my life--was mine again. But I also had to mourn all the years I'd lost. It was an exhilarating, painful time.

Pretty quickly, I realised I needed a new instrument--not piano, not guitar. I needed something that didn't remind me of everything that had gone before. I bought myself a soprano ukulele. It was tiny and bright red. It looked more like a toy than a musical instrument. I guess that was the energy I needed. I wanted to go back to that innocent place.

I wrote most of the songs on the first EIGHT THOUSAND BIRDS EP on that little ukulele.

And then I met Alejandro.

It didn't make any sense for me to join Taxi, a platform for musicians to pitch their songs to producers, filmmakers and music supervisors. I had no production abilities to speak of. I had a Samsung USB mic that plugged into my MacBook Pro. I was using GarageBand. There was no way I'd be able to create something good enough to pitch there, and I knew it. And yet, I had this unexplainable feeling that I should join. Over the years, I'd developed a habit of listening to those irrational hunches. I was slowly learning to trust the magic. So I signed up.

One day, still not entirely convinced I'd made the right decision, I saw a post in their member forum: