The moment I knew I wanted to create music is a bit hard to pinpoint because it feels like music has been in my life from the very beginning. Some of my earliest memories are of me fiddling with a guitar, dancing around or singing along to whatever was on the radio as my parents drove. I think the first time I really grasped music’s power was thanks to my mom. She used to drive this old grey Toyota that’s been around since before I was even born - probably a 90s model. She would always play Shania Twain’s UP! album, singing along as she drove, and without even realizing it, I memorized every word and found myself singing along too. Those moments in that old car felt magical; they showed me how deeply music could resonate.

I’ve always known I wanted to be on stage, entertaining. I dabbled in musical theater and dance, exploring different forms of performance, but I kept coming back to the desire to be the main artist. When I was a kid, I’d put on little shows for the neighbors in my garage, setting up seats and selling fake tickets. Even though it was terrifying, the thrill and adrenaline of performing always pulled me back. That energy of being in front of people, of connecting with them, is something I could never shake.

In high school, I started experimenting with making my own music. GarageBand became my best friend. Creating songs and sharing them, even with just five friends who were mostly listening out of support, made me so happy. Knowing even one person was listening felt amazing; like I was inviting them into my mind, sharing parts of myself that usually stayed hidden. It was addictive. I kept creating, kept releasing songs, and over time, I slowly started to find my sound.

Now, after six years as an artist, I can’t imagine my life without music. It’s like playing God, building a world and then inviting people in to experience it for themselves. It’s such a joy, and it never loses that initial magic.

At 24, signed to my dream label, a lot has changed, but some things never do. I’m still making music that I love, but now I have a team that supports my vision, which is incredible. The project we’re rolling out right now is especially close to my heart - it feels genuine, raw, and real. And the future project I’m working on is even more exciting. While I can’t reveal everything yet, I’ll just say that it’s a world you’ll want to escape to. It’s fun, raunchy, sexy and pure bliss. I’m thrilled to have you along for the ride.

Photo courtesy of Stephanie Diani

For as long as I can remember, I have loved entertaining. I have never been sure why the pull is so strong, but it is a deep desire that I truly can’t ignore.

I used to think I did it for the attention and positive reinforcement but recently I realized that performing actually feels like a safety zone for me. I know for some people that sounds crazy - how could getting up and performing in front of people feel safe? Well, to be brutally honest, in ‘real life’ I actually have trouble showing emotion. I hate crying, being vulnerable or anything of that nature. However, when I am acting, singing or writing, I am unafraid to share myself.

When I was 10 years old, I played Gavroche in a production of Les Misérables at a sleepaway theater camp I attended. Being 10, I was excited to be in an incredible production with older kids; I didn’t realize precisely how sad the musical was. We rehearsed, and spoiler alert, Gavroche dies, so I got to do a death scene. The first night of the show, after I died my untimely death and was carried off stage, I looked out into the audience from the wings and saw people crying. Why would they cry over a song and a character? They knew that I was just acting and that I was still alive, right??? The reaction genuinely puzzled me.

One day in 8th grade health class I heard the song “Godspeed” by Frank Ocean. It hit me hard. I don’t know if it was because I had just returned from a 6-month stay in Canada filming 13: The Musical where I had a big, amazing experience that I didn’t want to end or if it was hormones, but whatever it was that song and Frank Ocean’s performance made me tear up right there in the classroom. I was feeling what the audience at Les Mis was feeling: an unexplainable transcendence of reality. I finally understood how deep a character or song could run and I wanted to continue making myself and other people feel that feeling.

Before that moment I had written songs but I had never expressed myself in a song so I started trying. Writing is my outlet.

I know I have a lot to learn and experience, and I am still figuring out who I really am, but I am doing my best to stay true and vulnerable in my work. I write music to express myself and feel, I sing so I can share the emotions those songs make me feel, and I perform so I can bring other people along for the ride. I guess we are all doing our best to figure things out. Music is helping me find my way.

Photo courtesy of Jeanette D. Moses

To My Siblings in the Swing States:

I bet you are angry, and rightly so. Where we focus this anger is more important now than ever.

I can not imagine what it’s like to experience the barrage of advertising that you have had to endure leading up to today. The total amount spent on the Presidential and Senate races stands at over $10 BILLION. Our representatives literally spend more time fundraising than legislating to meet the needs of their constituents. Disgusting.

The vast majority of our elected representatives have sold out the American people for campaign contributions. The ones who don’t are being voted out of office in primaries where they’re outspent by special-interest-backed opponents. The will of the people has a “near zero, statistically insignificant effect on how they vote”. No matter how we vote, we can’t get our representatives to stop corporations from polluting our food, air, and water, let alone ensure that a 40-hour weekly wage can afford a middle class American Dream.

We are quietly experiencing class warfare, and people who work for a living are being pummeled. We’ve allowed the “United” States of America to become divided into two “sides” that both function only to serve the ruling class. So many of us are struggling as the systems that have historically supported our way of life continue to be corrupted and crumble.

It’s a disgrace that the United States isn’t a representative democracy, but instead an endless parade of loopholes, bureaucracy, waste and corruption. In the 2016 election, Trump “won the electoral college” despite receiving nearly three million fewer votes, losing with only 46.09% of the popular vote. Every six years, massively disproportional populations elect two Senators, no matter if they’re representing the 38.97 million constituents in California or Wyoming with less than 600,000 constituents. Not all voters are counted the same in our so-called democracy.

I have been feeling so angry at the direction of public discourse surrounding this election and the current state of the world. Somehow, as it so often does, “the economy” is the issue at the forefront of every voter’s mind. It pains me. As if the GDP percentage increases matter to the average working person, or the President has ANY control over the corporations that increase the cost of goods and services every time we blink.

Most of us are struggling to afford to live a life with dignity with a sense of safety and community. The average pay and the average cost of living simply don’t add up. Folks are making decisions about which meal or medicine to forego while they’re only two missed paychecks from losing their homes. None of this is working for us.

Companies are knowingly manufacturing 5,000+ cancer-causing “forever chemicals” that wind up in our food, clothes and drinking water. One side is patting themselves on the back for trying to ban six of them, and the other side is promoting ending safety regulation altogether and allowing the free market to self-regulate.

Neither “side” will commit to stop sending our weapons to a government that has used them to kill over 2% of the entire Palestinian civilian population. So far. While the continued supply is in violation of both U.S. and International law, the U.S. Presidential election will do nothing to end this genocide. Horrific.

A thriving government is supposed to be a space where the best ideas for the good of all are put forward and then acted upon. Instead, we have a system corrupt to the core. Since the Citizen’s United Supreme Court decision, unlimited and untraceable amounts of money have been legally spent on our electoral process. It is killing our democracy.

I can’t pinpoint the exact moment I knew I wanted to make music, but I remember being influenced by Avril Lavigne’s Let Go album back in grade school.

I thought she was the coolest - she had that tomboy vibe that resonated with me, and I wanted to be like her. I would imagine myself getting “discovered” like she was at a concert. I still believed in being discovered! Canadian Idol also probably had a bigger influence than you might imagine.

It wasn’t until middle school that I started writing songs - songs that, looking back, are hilarious. I wrote a song called “100 Miles to Nowhere” because “that’s where I wanted to go”. The drama! Middle school is hard.

Then, at 20, I rekindled my love of writing.

I didn’t think being a professional musician was a realistic option for me - more like a distant dream - but I felt the pull to write again. I would watch local musicians perform at small gigs, feeling that it was an unattainable world. Also funny, in hindsight. But then I started asking myself, “Why them and not me?” That shift in perspective made all the difference.

Instead of letting self-doubt hold me back, I embraced an audacious approach. I dove into the local music scene, studying the bands and how they maneuvered through the industry. My first significant step came when I played an open mic in Roncy, or Roncesvalles Village, in Toronto. You don’t even have to be booked for those, but it felt like a huge deal to me. I was so nervous!

After that, I played at a ladies’ first night at Junction City Music Hall, which was a milestone. My first official show. A year and a half later, I got a backing band, and everything changed. The rest is history.

Chicago Humanities connects people to ideas that shape and define, and promotes the lifelong exploration of what it means to be human. Their year-round programming brings one-of-a-kind content to audiences with an interest in art, science, technology, politics, literature and more. On October 26, 2024, they welcomed authors John Green and Rebecca Makkai to Northwestern University’s Cahn Auditorium for an afternoon conversation of fiction writing and the roles novels play in today’s society.

The conversation started with their ties to Chicago as Makkai grew up in the northern suburbs while Green lived and worked in the city post-college. It brought up the topic of setting and its importance to the plot of the story, but not necessarily considering it a character.

“Setting is its own thing and it used to be thought about in a very different way,” Makkai said. “Characters are there to change; setting is not, necessarily… Setting is there to put pressure on the situation.”

Establishing a setting and forgetting about it is a mistake Makkai said she made in her early writing days. She understands that characters need to walk through a setting using all their senses, with Green acknowledging that Makkai is one of his favorite storytellers when it comes to describing places.

They also agreed on writing settings that are familiar to them. As a reader, having an author describe a place known well to them but clearly not to the author can take away from the experience. When writing about Indianapolis, where Green was born and has lived for the last 15 years, he said, “I try to write about it as a place where real lives happen.”

Along with a familiar setting comes familiarity with the subjects at hand. It can be difficult to know how much research needs to be done until one is in the midst of writing and even then it is tough to know when enough is enough. Green shared that while writing Paper Towns he cut an entire subplot about the United States Postal Service after his editor mentioned that while it seemed like he did his research that teenagers would probably not find it as interesting as him.

Another fascinating topic that Green and Makkai discussed was the fine line between author and character. In a world where readers can follow their favorite authors on various social media platforms, they can see how certain characters or stories were based on the author’s own experiences. However, that does not mean the character and the author are the exact same person.

“I would be on these interview shows where the interviewer would be quite brazenly confusing me and the novel,” he said. “How can I tell them where the line is [when] I don’t know where the line is?”

Green continued, “I always felt very confident and comfortable knowing that fiction matters and that fiction is important and storytelling is at the core of who we are and what we do. Then suddenly that got pulled out from under me for whatever reason and I was like, ‘I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be writing’ and that’s why I turned to nonfiction.”

One of the more important topics they discussed came from an audience question about book bans. Green and Makkai agreed that unfortunately, book bans work. They try not to let it affect them because they believe that it not only lets those in favor of book bans win but gives them more credit for the intellectual freedom battle when they believe that belongs to teachers and librarians.

“It’s not just a book that can transform the lives of young people… it’s also that we have made a decision to hire experts to do this called teachers,” Green said. “It is weird to me that we are undermining their expertise at every turn and making it a battle.”

They are grateful that their education involved books by Toni Morrison or Tony Kushner, but it is devastating to hear teachers tell them they would love to put Green or Makkai’s works in their curriculum but teach in an area that would not allow it.

“You might have a kid who is only going to read 30 books in their life and you’ve just taken one away or you’ve taken many off the table and those are books that could change this kid’s life,” Makkai said.

Chicago Humanities recognizes the importance of storytelling, fiction or nonfiction. Bringing two beloved contemporary writers together for the first time allowed them to delve into topics that are important to them and important to the continued conversation of literature.

Photo courtesy of John Packman

There were two distinct moments in my life where I had the strongest urge to make a living making music. I already played saxophone since I was 9, and at 16 I started a weekly singing class with a focus on jazz and musical. After I finished high school my dream was to enroll into a musical theatre school in the UK. I travelled to London with my dad and checked out a few schools in person, applied and then got annihilated by my mom who wanted me to go study something proper at university. Half Asian mom, just saying.

For a few semesters I sampled courses in theoretical theatre and translator in Germany, but didn’t continue my studies and instead took film making classes in England, where I ended up graduating with a B.A. (Hons) and another diploma in animation and acting in Vancouver. How is filmmaking more proper than music? Mom logic.

I’m actually so grateful I did because now I work in graphic design and film and am able to make my own music videos and all things visual for my music.

I grew up with animated cartoons like Disney and Looney Tunes, so I fell in love with filmmaking and wanted to become an animator at Pixar. I even went to check out the studio in California because a friend of mine used to work there. That new career goal really confused me because I also loved music but I was struggling with what my heart truly wanted and which field was a better financial decision. Add acting to the list because I studied it for character animation and now wanted to try my luck in that as well. I did have a nervous breakdown and depression at some point.

There were other things going on as well - relationship trouble and recovering from a tailbone fracture. It all culminated into that moment where I sat in my room for a day or two, being in the deepest black hole; not eating, not remembering what I did and all of a sudden there was this eerie voice from somewhere above. It was more like an inner voice but it felt like it came from far away, like when you get inspiration or an idea and something hits you. And that female angel-like entity told me to do music. In that moment I felt such a relief, like I found a long-lost sister. I can’t even explain it but I knew then what my path is.

It’s been a long and winding road but I loved starting my music career in Toronto being a jazz singer and then moving into writing my own songs and getting them out into the world. I also do voice work for commercials and TV shows and write for sync libraries that place the songs into features, trailers and commercials. I also got some of my own music placed and continue to expand my network and opportunities, with a debut in video games coming soon.

In the last few years I realized that, as a solo artist, it’s tough and lonely to do everything by myself. I started discovering the few really great music professionals that I work with, that I consider my friends and that are part of my team. I support and collaborate with other artists that I have become good friends with. Trust me, it’s more fun, and lifting each other up is way more powerful than competing.

I can’t wait for you to hear my debut EP, PTSD, out in November - what a therapeutic ride it will be.

Conan Karpinski has been skipping parties to make music since the 9th grade, so it is not much of a surprise that he has built a career revolving around it. From scoring films and producing records to sound design and video direction, his creativity knows no bounds.

Since much of his creative endeavors have been a collaboration between multiple people, he wanted something that was entirely his own. Enter CON THE ARTIST. Being the only voice in control of the project, it allows him to create music however and whenever he wants.

“It was freeing; no one else telling me what’s good or not, I could just do me,” he said. “When I’m scoring a film, there’s this whole framework - it’s like playing in someone else’s sandbox, and you have to stay in the lines. But with CON THE ARTIST, I control the sandbox. I’m just out here making a mess and calling it art. With film scoring or directing there’s always someone else you have to make happy... but with CON it’s just Con.”

In order to challenge himself to stay creative, he lives by a quote his father would always tell him: say yes to the job and figure out how to do it later. He credits that quote for building his career, saying that throwing himself into situations he isn’t fully ready for brings out the best of his creativity.

As an example, his first live performance was booked a month prior with nothing prepared. He learned how to play the songs live, programmed lights and visuals in a matter of weeks. Another example: two weeks before Jon Bryant was set to go on a full European tour, a friend asked Karpinski if he could fill in as a bassist. He had no experience playing bass, but taught himself just before they traveled to places he had never been.

“Saying yes and figuring it out later has allowed me to do some wild things,” he said.

His latest single, “MONEY (on my mind)” was written just before a writing session at Red Bull Studios in Los Angeles. Karpinski had about 20 minutes before his session with another artist, and decided to pick up one of the studio guitars owned by The Strokes’ Albert Hammond Jr. He strummed what is now the game loop heard at the beginning of the song but didn’t think much of it. In fact, he wasn’t even sure if it was going to become anything worth releasing.

“It was just a fleeting moment of messing around, but I kept humming that hook, ‘money on my mind’, for days after,” he said. “That’s when I thought, maybe there’s some magic in it. I never thought I’d release it, but I showed it to a friend, and he told me it was the best thing I’d ever made. I’m not sure if it is, but that was enough for me to roll with it.”

Taking the time to sit down and write is a goal Karpinski sets for himself every day. Even when he doesn’t feel inspired, he’ll do it - mostly because that is all he really knows how to do. When he wants to get out of his head musically, however, he turns to a different medium entirely: building skateboards. He loves doing something so creatively different from music, and has built skateboards from scratch for many of his friends.

CON THE ARTIST is just a piece of Conan Karpinski. He has brought his interests and talents into several mediums, all by saying yes and figuring it out later. With a bold approach and an Avant-garde vision, his music is uniquely his own.

Photo courtesy of David Langford Photography

Growing up is hard! When I was younger, I never really fit in and I really struggled with expressing myself. I acted out all the time; in class, at home, wherever. I was only ever trying to make people laugh but, oftentimes, it just came off as annoying - disruptive.

It always felt like there were so many expectations placed on me concerning how I ought to model myself. Secretly, I always knew that none of those expectations were really me - but I had no understanding of what any of that really meant, nor did I have any means to advocate for myself even if I knew that something wasn’t right. I was tasked with maintaining an illusionary version of myself that I was simultaneously raging against.

I had always loved music but as I came into my teen years it became an absolute necessity. I would take my rinky-dink mp3 player to the park in the middle of our street and I would swing on the swing set there for hours at a time listening to whatever music I could get my hands on. I would download music on our laughably slow internet, rip CDs from the Stratford library, listen to radio - anything - it was everything to me. Alone, bizarrely swinging in an abandoned suburban park for hours on end, finally finding a place to be.

I want to give that to somebody. If I could ever make something good enough that somebody who feels the way that I felt then might add me to their mp3 player and find a swing set of their own to swing on, that would be really cool.



Music making was never really a choice for me, it was more of a compulsion.

When I was a child I would sing and hum to myself, much to the chagrin of my classmates. At home I would sing and bang on the cabinets. Before long, I began picking up my father’s instruments and noodling away until I figured out how to make them do what I asked of them.



From an early age I had always participated in music. My parents enrolled me in singing lessons, dance classes, musicals: I loved all of it. I suppose, however, the moment I knew I wanted to make music was when I asked my parents if I could take flute lessons. Choosing the flute somehow felt like my decision as opposed to the myriad of activities and lessons my parents put me into.

From that moment, I never looked back. I got so into playing the flute that I joined the youth orchestra and discovered a love for orchestral repertoire. I ended up going even further and studied flute at University.

But something about studying flute at University made me want to throw it all away and scream into a microphone instead. As much as I love flute (and I do still love the flute!), I also love singing. It’s something that I neglected for a long time. Shame, self-doubt, imposter syndrome; I felt all of the usual suspects. It gets us all at some point or another.

Somewhere along the way, I began writing songs - and it felt amazing. I began collaborating with the other members in our band and singing the songs we created. Making music with the band has allowed me the freedom to feel like my own musician for the first time. I’ve started writing music I thought I wasn’t allowed to write. I’ve started performing my songs with a new sense of stage presence. I’m excited to see what comes next.



I’d always found music to be alluring, whether it was Elvis on the radio, or my great aunt’s Readers Digest Big Band compilations, or my mom playing ABBA Gold and Paul Simon’s Graceland (such hip material I know) - all alluring but the sensations I felt at that time were somewhat nebulous. When I sat down at my friend’s drum set in grade 5, however, it hit like a slug to the solar plexus. I immediately went home and told my parents I wanted to play drums. They, being sensible, of course refused. The itch stayed with me through high school and eventually my persistence paid off. I was given a set of my own. At some point I discovered it was possible to go to college for music and that was that. I set my compass to the North Star and off I toddled like a wide eyed naïf to see what I could see.

Reading the prompt to this guest blog actually made me laugh out loud. I just sat smiling for a few minutes with my fingers on the keyboard asking myself, where do I begin?

I’m not sure what a typical music journey looks like, but I’m pretty sure mine has been anything but typical. I didn’t go to music school. I started playing solo bar gigs with my guitar in college so I didn’t have to work a crappy retail job. After I graduated from theatre school, I was off to NYC to make it on Broadway! After a year of showing up for cattle calls and trying to get seen by directors without much success, there was only one consistent thing in my life - singing and playing guitar.

If you would have told me that 20 years later, I’d still be working and supporting myself as a musician, I’m not sure I would have believed you.

My career up to this point has been one long, slow burn. It started when I was 10 years old, when my dad bought me my first guitar. Learning to play that guitar led to me joining my first rock band at 15 and falling in love with all things music. Music was my everything. It was my escape, my creative outlet, my building blocks. When my parents got divorced, music saved me. When I was struggling to come out of the closet at 18, music, specifically Melissa Etheridge and the Indigo Girls, showed me a way forward towards my authentic self. I would sit in my bedroom for hours trying to learn songs.

Music is and has always been the one thing in my life that never fails me. Even when I tried to quit music in 2012 while I was working on my master’s degree, music came calling and would not take no for an answer.

I recorded and released my first EP, It’s Home, in 2006. Since then, I’ve been on a mission to grow as a songwriter. I released another EP, The Ann Street Session, in 2013. The songs I was writing were stronger and my guitar skills were continuing to evolve. I was playing lots of gigs, and I even got to open for Ani DiFranco! Still, I kept my head down and worked on my craft in every way I knew how.

In 2014 I teamed up with singer/songwriter Christian Porter and we released a self-titled album called Porter & Sayles in 2016. Even though Christian and I parted ways in 2019 to pursue other endeavors, I’m incredibly proud of the songs we created together and I appreciate the growth they gave me as a songwriter and collaborator. Especially since those songs landed us a spot on the 2019 Melissa Etheridge cruise, where we played with incredible musicians including Melissa herself.

The pandemic was a weird time for creative folks. Some people THRIVED. I know artists who wrote entire albums or learned a new instrument. The pandemic had the opposite effect on me. The time at home forced me to finally slow down long enough to realize how absolutely exhausted I was - how burnt out I had become. But something about the shutdown of the entertainment industry ended up being a game changer for me. I needed a reset; a way to refocus and recenter myself. In 2020, I started taking music production classes at Berklee Online. I’d been in and around recording studios since the early 2000s, so music production was always familiar to me, but also so intimidating. I decided it was time for me to learn how to tackle the software - to push the buttons and push them with confidence. And if I was going to make a mistake pushing those buttons, at least I was going to learn how to fail fast so I could move on to the next thing.

Learning production is what inspired several of the songs on my current EP, Singles, and made me seek out a producer to get it off the ground. I met Julie Wolf (Ani DiFranco & Indigo Girls collaborator) on the Melissa Etheridge cruise, and knew pretty quickly that she was the right person for the job. I am endlessly thankful for her kindness, musicianship and guidance. Right now, I finally feel like after 20 years I’m standing in a space that feels right. Not because I planned things to go this way, but because every year I have remained dedicated to the process of being better than I was the year before. I know I can sing, but a lot of people can sing. Being able to sing doesn’t make me special. Being the kind of singer I am makes me special. My energy as a performer, my interpretation of every lyric, my stage presence - all of that makes me what I am. And I don’t mind telling you, as it’s taken me my whole life to say it out loud: there is no one like me. My voice is my own, and I can’t wait for the world to hear it.

The love and support I’ve received from my friends and family coupled with my determination to always improve has gotten me to where I am today. And despite being really tired sometimes, I know how lucky I am to live this life and I wouldn’t have it any other way. You are never too old to learn, and I think being a life-long learner has helped me feel younger and live with more purpose. If you’re feeling stuck right now, challenge yourself to learn something new - no matter how big or small. I promise it will lead to something new for you, even if it has nothing to do with the thing you set out to learn in the first place.

I finally feel like I’m where I’m supposed to be, and I make sure to remind myself of that every day. I am living my most authentic life as a woman, a lesbian and as a bi-racial individual, and I have music to thank for that. On days when I doubt where I am in my journey, my grandmother reminds me from the great beyond that it will be alright. I’ll look outside my studio window, and without fail, I’ll see her - a cardinal sitting in a tree, letting me know I’m right where I’m supposed to be, saying, “You’re doing fine love. Keep going. There are people out there who still need your light.”