Purpose - Nova Brown

Hi! My name is Nova Brown and I am so excited to be featured in this week’s blog post! I am a 17-year-old junior at Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart and have been friends with Abi, Cherie, and Maddie for most of my life. I hope you enjoy what I have to say.

When my mother found out she was pregnant with me, my father read, in a parenting book, that it is good for a fetus to hear music in utero. So, prior to my birth, I was introduced to the music world through the walls of embryonic fluid; I heard Bach, Chopin, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, The Ramones, etc. Even before I was able to form words, my incoherent babbles had a tune to them. Music was something that nobody ever had to describe to me, I have always understood it. As I write this, I think back to my first favorite song, “Ease on Down the Road” from the musical The Wiz. Coming home from daycare, a four-year-old Nova Brown would immediately turn on her DVD player in the middle of her room with walls painted the loudest shade of neon pink, playing “Ease on Down the Road” and being transported into the land of Oz. I was enamored by the beat and sound. I still cry every time I hear Diana Ross and Michael Jackson sing, “You’ve got to ease on down, ease on down the road.” Music has always taken me beyond my own life and transported me into a new world, whether that be for a 30-second interlude or a two-hour Orchestra.

The thing I love to do most in the world is sing. I am constantly singing or humming, just using my voice musically. To me, a day without singing is like a day without eating. I cannot even imagine doing anything else with my life. Music has gotten me through the best and worst times of my life, and there is no human feeling that a piece of music has not touched. I am often frustrated by the limitations of language because of the misunderstandings that can result from it. There is no universal communicative language, but music defies this. The story that a Piano, Flute, Viola, Bongos, or Pipa can tell, goes far beyond any human language. We share music with plants and animals and can have the essence of our being be touched by music.

Music has no definition. It’s the birds softly singing in the early morning, it’s an 18 piece drum set blaring so loud eardrums rupture, it’s eight-part harmonies of human voices layered on top of one another to create one perfect sound. Music is structure and chaos, it can be loud or soft, crescendo or piano, there are no limitations for music. Sound is a seductress preying on each person who has lived. I love every part of music: every crack and scream, or ugly sound that it produces is appreciated because it is part of music’s story.

I want to be a musician for the rest of my life, I’ve known this since before I can remember. I like to imagine myself as a grapefruit-sized fetus sucking my thumb floating serenely, encased by the walls of my mother, and visualize what it must have been like to hear music for the first time, I think that is when I began to kick.