A New Chapter: I'm Independently Creating & Producing My Own Film

We all have a voice within us that points to where we’re heading in life. While we’re doing things in the day-to-day fashion, there’s a voice that speaks to us in the grand scope of our life: years and years into the future. For me, this voice was a spiritual one. It was a calling. It was something, while quiet at first, that grew and grew into a vision that I have a duty and a responsibility to strive toward. This is my vision, and God’s vision for me, of telling stories through music.

I knew, deep down, that I’d always wanted to do something related to music in the future. I could avoid this natural pull if I wanted to, but it’d just drag me back to who I fundamentally am. While I’m considered a ‘classical pianist’ by many people, it’s really just a fraction of my entire musical journey. Instead, I deem myself to be a musical storyteller. Sure, it can be from classical music. But where I find my home and feel called to do is creating stories through music: composing. 

I never had a composing teacher or anything. It was mostly done out of necessity, to channel the load of emotions I so deeply feel on a regular basis and as a way of processing this whole cosmos of the existence of humanity. Growing up, while I loved composing, I heard many outside voices telling me to stray away from composing, that it’s entirely subjective, impossible to make a living out of it, or that I didn’t follow ‘proper’ composing techniques. So for years, I listened to those voices. I suppressed my 5-year-old inner spirit and focused entirely on classical piano.

But then, at the start of my high school years, I got back into it. Slowly, I revitalized that joy I once had and would compose for hours on end. I loved every second of it. Every time, I would start with a fresh, new palette on Logic Pro and be welcomed by my very own imagination. I could create anything! But with the societal pressure of stacking activities, awards, and grades in order to get into a ‘good’ college, I kept composing on the back burner, still away from the public eye.

However, this was when there was an increasingly nagging voice that came over my past several years. This voice of being a music composer. That thought frightened me - what would society think if I chose down to go this path in life? After all, I've been conditioned to follow the tried method of 'success:' do good in high school → do good in college → do good in a job, etc. But to do composing, that's a whole different story. It's scary. And I was definitely scared.

So in my high school years, I desperately looked for something else - a second major I could potentially study in college. While I discovered and went deep into many interesting subjects, like aviation, climate science, education, geopolitics, start-ups, psychology, and urbanism, I never felt a particular attraction to commit to them when I felt a much, much greater attraction to seriously dedicate myself to music.

Even though I was perfectly on track to becoming a music major in college, I was still very much concerned, not only about my odds of making it in life or finances but also about what type of music I wanted to specialize in. I had always done classical piano, and it would only make sense to continue that into college. But as I discovered more about myself and what I felt called to do, I began to realize that it wasn’t classical piano that I wanted, but another aspect of music: composing.

As time went on, with a 4-month gap in my usual-packed schedule after high school graduation, there was a window of opportunity. Having just come back from the best month of my life in Asia, I was determined to start afresh, this time, not letting anything hold me back from what I felt called to do. So inspired by this specific point in my life and my experiences traveling abroad, I created a movie to capture all my experiences thus far in life, and I call this movie, “Rebirth.”

“Rebirth” marks the start of something new and fresh. It marks my breaking free from following man’s gospel of success to God’s gospel of success. It’s a movie combining the art of musical storytelling and cinematography. I’m here to be a storyteller, not through words, but through music. Join me on this journey through my Instagram and YouTube, where the live premiere of the movie will take place.

Onto a new adventure,

Jeston Lu