We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kelsey Cruz a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Kelsey, thanks for joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.
Kelsey, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
During my time at university, I studied Applied and Computational Math and minored in Computer Science, graduating with a Bachelors of Science. I work in tech as a program manager, and although my work isn’t directly related to music, it has given me the opportunities to explore my creative endeavors and invest in my music.
I’m more introverted than I let on and I can tell you all my friends will disagree and say I’m an extrovert. But, ever since I was younger, I’ve enjoyed being alone writing in my room. I’m still like that today. I always felt the best way to get to know me was through my lyrics. If you listened to the words behind my songs, you would know what I was going through or understand a piece of me in a different way. Songwriting serves as an outlet that no other avenue can satisfy, and it brings me closer to myself. It serves as a beautiful way of storytelling along with expressing myself in ways that others may not normally see me.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
The first time I felt this was performing in college, when one of my peer actors’ mother came up to me and told me that she cried during my performance of singing “Dance With My Father” by Luther Vandross and she was moved by my arrangement of it. I also recently performed at a show last week and I saw streaks of tears in one of the women’s eyes in the crowd. She came up to me and told me that she needed to hear that song. The feeling of connecting with someone because of your words, or the way you convey lyrics, and how it touches them, is truly unlike any other feeling, and difficult to replicate or compare to any other experience. It’s the ability to invoke an emotion with others and connect that makes me feel good, and the high of this connection is unmatched. To know that I made an impact on at least one person through my singing or songwriting is so special. I’m not one for public speaking, but I love being on a stage performing. While it might be somewhat ironic, performing is the one place that feels most comfortable to me, and it’s a time when I can express myself genuinely and completely.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Of course, I think as you meet any creative, we’re probably very emotional. Or maybe that’s just me. But I’ve definitely had my share of tumultuous times, not really sure of what I’m doing or if the music I make is something that people care to hear. After having put out a single, I felt very discouraged from the positive feedback. Everyone loved it and I thought “wow, I can’t write anything better than that”, and I became creatively stuck. Then, one day, by a stroke of magic I guess, I decided to get out of this funk and do a challenge to write a song everyday for a month. I’m a very 0 to 1 person, and being overwhelmed could be both helpful and detrimental for myself. I had a packed schedule of writing a song a day, editing the videos, and posting it. On top of this I was very active with playing sports, my own health, family, and my day job. But everyday after I would lie in bed exhausted, I was more motivated than ever and couldn’t wait to do it all over again the next day.
For the challenge, each song was based on a prompt I would ask my followers on Instagram, and I would base the song off of it. I wrote interesting songs from prompts like “a song about sitting in LA traffic” to “a song about killing all of your plants”. Let’s just say I’m not really a great plant mom. While the exercise to write daily was a bit detrimental to my health, whenever I am doubtful of myself or feel stuck, I always come back to the videos I posted because it serves as a reminder that I am a creative person that can make something beautiful and I can connect with people in different ways, which are the core reasons why I write.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/kelseycruz
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamkelseycruz/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/iamkelseycruz
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@iamkelseycruz
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@iamkelseycruz
Image Credits
Aryf, Jonathan Lane