For the entire time I was a teacher in CPS I would ask why. I'd watch wonderful, inspiring people get beaten down by these frustrating hows and whys and the answers that eluded us. How can we prevent public education in Chicago from degrading any further? Why can we spend money on a new ferris wheel while school budgets get slashed?

The music moved me, music that I was creating with my own breath and hands. It was the most real form of magic I’d ever discovered. I learned in those early days what incredible emotion could be found in music. To a young writer, music became a battery in which I could charge inspiration and draw energy.