Even Off-Key, It’s Still Music

If I Can Hear It, I'm Still Here

Jon Batiste- Grace, grit, and genius at the keys.

Life has felt off-key for almost a year now—like an orchestra warming up, but never quite beginning the song. Each day is a wall of sound—no melody, no resolution. Just a chaotic layering of responsibilities: doctor appointments, kids, work, writing, therapies. The necessary parts of life play the loudest. Everything else? Background static.

Truthfully, I wasn’t great at staying connected even before the diagnosis. I’ve always lived a bit in my head, content to hum quietly in my own little rhythm. But now, the internal volume has been turned all the way up, and the outside world has faded into a distant echo. It feels like I’m sitting in the audience of my own life—watching the performance instead of playing in it.

Sometimes, it’s not just offbeat—it’s complete dissonance. Thoughts and memories crash like cymbals at the wrong moment. Plans collide mid-air. Emotions don’t match the moment. It’s hard to focus, hard to stay in conversations, when a thousand instruments in my brain are all trying to solo at once. Pigpen’s dust cloud? That’s me—ideas swirling, vision muddy, clarity elusive.

But somewhere in the chaos, a faint drumbeat continues. Steady. Persistent.

I want more.

I want to try new things. Make something meaningful. I want to travel—really travel—lose myself in unfamiliar places and find threads of connection with people I’ve never met. I want to write like it matters. Read voraciously—novels about healing, craft books on writing, inspiration, adventure. I want to play with my kids until we’re breathless from laughter.

I want to make art—even if it’s terrible. Mix music like a bedroom DJ. Pick up my guitar again, even if my fingers forget the strings. Hike steep trails, sweat through workouts that make me feel alive, go silent on a meditation retreat. Speak out about breast cancer, trauma, resilience. Drive a fast car. Take a motorcycle through twisting mountain roads, wind clawing at my jacket.

But the violins screech. The horns come in too early. The rhythm skips, stutters.

Time is running out.

The conductor’s baton is missing—or maybe I’ve been holding it all along and didn’t realize it. The music rises and falls—louder, softer, deeper, sharper. Always moving. Always just out of reach.

I know I need clarity. I know the music of this life could be something beautiful—maybe not perfect, but true. Honest. Whole. But how do you find harmony when you can’t even see your way out of the fog?

Recently, I attended a performance by a musician I deeply admire: Jon Batiste. Not just for his talent, but for the man he is. His spirit, tenacity, and ability to push through the noise and create beautiful art moved me deeply.

His wife, Suleika Jaouad, has cancer, and brilliantly writes about her journey with breathtaking honesty. He walks beside her through it all and somehow channels all of that love, grief, and resilience into his music.

We’ve never met, but I felt connected to both of them as I sat in the audience. I watched him weave sorrow and joy, grief and laughter, spirituality and humor, different cultures and deep emotion—into a single journey, told through the piano. It was more than music. It was a life story, composed in sound.

I cried. Not just a tear or two, but deeply. The music spoke to something in me—something wordless. It felt like he was playing the composition of my own life: messy, aching, unfinished… but beautiful.

And in that moment, I believed maybe I could do the same.

Maybe I can tie it all together—the traumas, the cancer, the friends and family, the travels, the books, the writing, the flying, the conversations with people raised differently. Maybe it’s all part of the score. And maybe, just maybe, I can compose something out of the noise.

I just don’t want the music to stop.

Even if it’s off-key. Even if it’s out of tune.

Because if I can still hear it… I know I’m still here.