The Journey

The piece became a way of channeling the accumulated frustration of feeling as though the odds were increasingly stacked against us. Rather than trying to resolve that feeling, I let the music carry it—moving between tension, aggression, melody, and moments of release.

As the song neared completion, something happened that I couldn't have planned for. I reached out to Derek Sherinian, whose playing I first discovered during his time with Dream Theater around their Falling Into Infinity era, whose style became an integral part of my burgeoning musical voice. He listened to the track and responded by playing along with it, ultimately contributing throughout the entire piece. What he brought to the song was unmistakably Derek Sherinian: a combination of power, character, melodic instinct, and that distinctive keyboard voice that had made such an impression on me when I first heard him years ago. Rather than changing the identity of the composition, he seemed to recognize what was already there and expand it.

That became an unexpected counterpoint to the feeling that gave birth to the song. The world can certainly make the odds feel overwhelming, and sometimes the effort required simply to keep moving forward can seem futile. But things also happen that we never could have predicted. A musician whose work helped shape the music I love and my own musical voice ended up hearing something I had created and becoming part of it.

In that sense, the finished song became an answer to its own question. The odds may be overwhelming, but they are not absolute. Sometimes, against all expectation, something finds a way through.