I love my comfort zone. It is safe, warm and cozy (albeit a little boring at times). It is also not very big – those people who say you need to make an effort to do one thing every day that scares you clearly have never lived my life, where truth be told I do many things every day that scare me at least a little. I am no stranger to anxiety.

And so, as you may be able to imagine, going to the United States for two months on my own was one of the scariest things I have ever done in my life. As I was boarding the plane in March 2011, I literally felt like I was going to my death. It wasn’t that I was afraid of flying – I was afraid of the unknown.

Fast forward to me being in Arizona with recording artist and sound wizard Steve Roach, in his studio. “So why don’t you just make some sounds, and I’ll record them, and you improvise on that, and we’ll see what happens from there”, Steve said. Words out of my worst nightmare. I’d never done ‘just sounds’. Every song I had ever written before (or since) started with lyrics. Words are what I do, you know. They’re what I know. Just making sounds makes me feel awkward and self-conscious. Then again, maybe words are also what I hide behind. Maybe the sound part of my music deserves a little more attention now and then (enter vocal coaching).

The studio session with Steve resulted in Rasa Dreams/Lonely Mountain theme, the song that comes with this Weekly Note. I just made sounds, he recorded them and played them back to me in loops on his magical synthesizing device, and then I improvised on that. He mixed it up a little, added some reverb, slowed down one or two of the sounds I just made, put in a single note from his synthesizer, and voilà, we had a song. “You were born to do this!” Steve exclaimed. I wasn’t entirely sure of that, but I liked the way it sounded. ‘Who knows’, I thought, ‘I might try this again sometimes’.

The truth is, I never did. Stepping out of my comfort zone has never become a hobby and it’s rarely something I do voluntarily. But when I do, it is so incredibly energizing and just plain fun! Not always (sometimes it’s just awkward and embarrassing), but mostly it is an empowering experience which always leaves me thinking ‘I might try this again sometimes’.

Hence, these Weekly Notes – they are now my weekly dose of uncertainty, vulnerability, and risk. I hope you enjoy Rasa Dreams/Lonely Mountain theme. As I listen to it, I can hardly believe myself that everything you hear is my voice. There is a low note that lasts a few seconds at the beginning and at the end that came from the synthesizer, but it is hard to discern. It goes very well on repeat, too.