Understanding the Assignment

Today is July 18, 2025. Today, I am in the middle of our July CREATIVE RESET—and I have challenged the participants to identify that one big, scary goal that has been placed on the back burner for far too long and to just do it, right now, in all its unprepared, unpolished, ridiculously rushed splendor.  Today. And I am doing it right along with them. I am challenging myself to revise and record an original song by the end of our reset: July 28, 2025. With lush orchestrations, acute production smarts, and the supreme grace and patience of Traviso Milner, I am able to grow musically and creatively, right along with my workshop participants. Today, I can ask the workshop participants to Do As I Do. Today, I am taking the time to reset, recalibrate, and give thanks, while striving to do better and learn what I can about my own resistance. Tonight, I will work on my breath control and phrasing and sing in the glow of my disco ball.

💖 ~a dream come true!

Y’all. Any of you who have known me for a minute, know that I love ‘70’s and ‘80’s R&B. If you’ve been on my feed for a few seasons, you might remember “Black Ivory Fridays,” where I would post a BI song every Friday…remember that? Well, last summer, I had a conversation with Russell Patterson, one of the three members of Black Ivory, and I took it upon myself to be bold and say a thing. I said, “You know what? Before I die, I would love to sing a duet with you…” And don’t you know that gracious man didn’t skip a beat and said, “Let’s do it!”

When I coach my one-on-one clients and talk about diving into the depths of our creativity, these are the big leaps I’m talking about! While we were recording, I was nervous and shaking and pitchy and dry-mouthed. I made a ton of mistakes along the way, for real. Some of those takes sounded ugly to me. Some takes I physically could not bring my creative vision fully to fruition, no matter how hard I tried. Some of my growth moments felt downright embarrassing. But there were more than a few measures that came close to replicating what I heard deep within my soul.

Truth time: many of you may not know this, but I have a severe hearing impairment. I can’t hear at all out of one ear and have limited hearing in the other ear. I read lips and I’ve compensated for years. I’ve tried to live my entire life on my left side. I’ve always loved to sing, but I’m also asthmatic, and sing sharps and flats and half-tones, depending on how I’m facing the sound source—it’s really kind of crazy. And Russell Patterson knew all of that before we started---but none of that made any difference to him, or to our beautiful, gracious and talented producer, Traviso Milner. Those two men listened and felt my vision, and collaboratively made my dream come true: to work with them both and create a song that I would actually release. In my sixties, y’all. I am sixty-seven years old and a Debut Recording Artist. 2025 is going to be a long-stemmed creative bouquet. Crazy.

This is what you can do when you ask. When you believe in the world beyond yourself and trust in the Best-Case Scenarios. This is the embodiment of what can evolve in a beautiful, gracious world. Please, give it a listen and let me know what you hear. I’m so grateful—to Russell Patterson, to Traviso Milner, to our families for their grace in sharing their loved ones for this project. This was the experience of a lifetime, for real. So grateful.

It drops on Monday, January 13, 2025 on all the streaming platforms.

I hope you like it!

Coming soon!

Available Monday, January 13, 2025