My mom is a piano teacher. When I was three years old, I climbed up on the piano bench and started playing by ear the song that she had just finished teaching to her student. I guess she kinda flipped out.
So, I begged her to teach me. I woke up at 5:00 a.m. and practiced for hours every day. I lived to perform, I loved to compete. I was that little pianist kid you see on TV, whose legs don't reach the pedals, playing a twenty-minute concerto accompanied by a symphony orchestra. I always loved everything about being on a stage. It was just in my blood.
And the music was in my head. Big and full, with harmony and counterpoint kinda like a film score written on the fly for my daily life. I'd compose melodies to the accompaniment of the "notes" of the brakes on the school bus, car horns and all the other sounds around me. It never crossed my mind that there wasn't a symphony banging around in everyone else's head too.