What is Searching for Stars?

It's a multimedia memoir — part book, part mixtape, part constellation of memory. Think of it as stories pixelated through sound, image, and nostalgia — a place where music and memory echo together. Imagine getting to know a new friend through her mixtape of memories, each story another piece of a constellation slowly taking shape, like sitting together in a fireside chat beneath the stars.

What does "musical echolalia" mean?

Echolalia is when words or sounds repeat — like echoes that return without being invited. Musical echolalia is how songs and lyrics loop in memory, shaping how we feel, remember, and even communicate. It's the heartbeat of this project.

Is this a book, a blog, or something else?

It's all three, and none at once. Searching for Stars is a living memoir told in fragments — part website, part audio archive, part retro dream. Imagine a mixtape that keeps unfolding into chapters.

Who is this project for?

For readers. For music lovers. Nostalgia chasers. For kids of the 80s, 90s, and 2000s — and for anyone who's ever pressed rewind on a memory. It's for seekers of light in the dark, and for those who feel music deep within their soul. It's for the little girl inside me who dreamed of being a writer, who thought in music video formation and remembered in lyrics long before she had words to explain it. It's for anyone who carries loops of sound and story in their mind and is still searching for ways to make sense of them. It's for my children — the living record of my life and the love story their father and I have built — so they will always know who I was, and how they inspired me to finally share my voice.

The pixel art style was inspired by our kids' love of old-school Nintendo and Sega games — a love my husband and I were proud to pass on to them. Memory itself often feels pixelated — fragments, pieces, little glowing squares that come together into something whole. Vivid sensory-filled memories, retro games, mixed CDs, VHS tapes, and the texture of nostalgia. I usually start with real photos from my life or family albums, then run them through tools like ChatGPT, Canva, and PicsArt, cropping, layering, remixing, and refining until it feels right. The visual art helps bring the stories to life like a pixelated scrapbook.

Can I listen as well as read?

Yes — the site weaves together audio narration, Spotify soundtracks, and pixel art. Each story has its own soundtrack, so you can hear the memory as you read it. You can also listen to the project in its entirety on Spotify, or hear the Searching for Stars soundtrack.

Where should I start?

Anywhere. That's the beauty. The project is a constellation, and you can enter from any star. It never happens in order — it comes in bursts, like shooting stars revealing their story one streak at a time. Certain images throughout the site are clickable, leading you to other pieces that share similar characters, themes, memory vibes, or synced timelines. Small bridges between stories that hum with the same rhythm.

Will this become a book?

That's the dream. Searching for Stars is being built as a digital-first memoir, but its fragments are already shaping into a printed constellation. Someday, you'll hold it in your hands like a mixtape for the soul.

How can I support the project?

Read. Listen. Share. Tell a friend who loves music. Post your favorite piece, or just press play. Every echo helps keep the stars alive.

What inspired Searching for Stars?

It was born from a lifelong love of music, memory, and storytelling — from mixtapes passed between friends, to songs that became soundtracks for entire chapters of my life. It's both a personal archive and an invitation for others to remember alongside me.

Is this project autobiographical?

Yes — it's my story, but told through music, movies, and memory loops that connect to something bigger. While it's personal, it's also universal, because the songs that shaped me are the same songs that have carried so many others, too.

Eyesore: Echoes from Midian

We were living in that little apartment, engaged but not yet married, when Jamie brought Nightbreed home from Hastings the kind of place that sold stories in every form: books, discs, memories. I’d never seen the film before, but he lit up when he asked if I had. “Oh, we have to get it,” he said, and I trusted his taste enough to say yes. We watched it that night on our old TV, curled up in the electric hush of our living room. I was already in love with horror, but this one felt different... magical, mythic. Halfway in, during the Lithium scene, a voice echoed through the speakers and my whole body went still. I knew that voice. “What have you been taking this evening?” “Lithium,” it said, and suddenly I was back in my brother’s car in Lake Charles, Louisiana, hearing Choke’s “Eyesore” for the first time one of my favorite hardcore songs, now tied to this moment, this movie, this man beside me. My past and present cracked open and spilled into each other. Two worlds colliding, fusing into something deeper.

Back then, I didn’t know where that audio clip came from just that it haunted me, stuck in my chest like a warning or a truth. “Everybody’s got to believe in something.” That line always got me — not just as a lyric, but like a truth aimed straight at the chest. I didn’t know exactly what I believed in back then, not really. But I believed in that song. I believed in the weight it carried. The way it moved through me like it knew something I hadn’t figured out yet.

I played “Eyesore” on repeat after that first time in the car, windows down, the Louisiana air thick and alive, my brother beside me, both of us caught in that early 2000s underground heartbeat. He was in a band (Victim of Modern Age) part of that same fierce, indie scene heavy, raw, honest. I was there, lucky to witness it, feel it, soak it up. I never saw Choke live, but their sound felt like it lived in my bones. The lyrics hit hard. The mood hit harder. And the clip at the start of that song ...that clip it hit differently now, hearing it again, years later, wrapped in the glow of Jamie’s recommendation and the deep, aching beauty of Nightbreed.

Nightbreed wasn’t just cool — it was unlike anything I’d ever seen. It flipped the whole horror narrative upside down. The monsters weren’t the villains; they were the ones being hunted, misunderstood, destroyed just for existing. Boone wasn’t running from evil — he was running toward something sacred. A secret city called Midian, hidden underground, filled with creatures who weren’t monsters at all, just… different. Watching it, I felt this strange ache — like some part of me already knew that place. The peeling-face scene carved itself into my brain, too. Visceral, disturbing, unforgettable. And weirdly, it stuck with me in a way I never expected — I think about it sometimes in moments of anxiety, when I rub my face, overwhelmed, trying to pull something invisible off. Maybe that’s what the monsters were doing too. Shedding masks. Trying to survive. Trying to be seen.

There’s something about moments like that — when music and memory fold into film, and the past walks into the room without knocking. It reminded me that the things we carry — the songs, the scenes, the people, the pain, the passion — they don’t just fade. They wait. They wait to be seen again, maybe in a movie you never meant to watch, maybe in a line of dialogue you already knew by heart. Nightbreed showed me that the monsters weren’t monsters at all. Just the misunderstood, the hidden, the ones who kept running until they found somewhere to belong. And maybe that’s what we all are — a little monstrous, a little sacred, trying to make sense of the noise. That song still moves through me. That film still echoes. And somewhere between Lake Charles and that apartment with Jamie, between a burned CD and a scene where a man peels off his face, I found something worth holding onto. Something loud. Something alive. Something beautiful in the dark.

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Searching For Stars

Wanted Dead or Remembered : A Road Trip Through Myth, Memory, and the Wild West

By Lauren Nixon-Matney • April 12, 2026

Film: Young Guns 1 & 2 Bon Jovi : Blaze of Glory

Imagine: The Savage Was the Seer Enoch’s Echo, My Father’s Voice, and the Stories We Were Never Meant to Forget

By Lauren Nixon-Matney • April 12, 2026

John Lennon: Imagine

The Girls of Rock and Roll: Rosey Blair, Chipette Energy, and a Very Special Kind of Magic

By Lauren Nixon-Matney • April 12, 2026

*A letter of light for Rosey Blair* Okay this is going to sound oddly specific but stay with me... You remind me of a very particular kind of feeling. The kind that lives somewhere between fall air, soft lighting, and a childhood movie that most people forgot existed, but the ones who remember it? Oh we remember. The 1987 Chipmunk Adventure! Which I did not expect to ever connect to another adult human about, and yet here I am. There’s just something about that movie the movement, the music, the chaos, the fun, the outfits, the chipettes... like being in motion and color and sound at the same time. And watching you feels like that again in a weirdly beautiful , full circle way. Not in a “this is aesthetic content” way more like a “this is a person who actually lives inside her life” way. And ironically that’s what makes your aesthetic top notch in my opinion. Cozy but not fake. Honest and raw but not too harsh. Funny without trying to perform funny. (which is rarer than people think) There’s a warmth in how you show up that feels familiar in a way I can’t fully explain but definitely recognize. I came across you scrolling my phone, postpartum, trying to find my footing again. At the time I was in that weird in between space, relearning my body, trying to feel like myself inside something that had completely changed... yet again. And you showed up in your space on instagram in a way that felt real. Authentic. Original. Not “perfect body positivity” not curated confidence just a woman existing in her body dressing it, living in it, laughing in it and making that feel normal again. Healthy. Beautiful. Fun! Something I really grew to respect about you was that you didn’t stay frozen in one version of that message or yourself just to make people comfortable. You shifted. And I really admire the way you talk about Changing your mind. Leaving spaces that don’t feel right anymore. Figuring out that loving yourself isn’t one fixed version it evolves. That kind of honesty is quietly powerful and extremely profound. You evolved and changed your mind out loud. And people always have something to say when a woman does that... but you stayed steady anyway. That kind of self trust? That’s the part people don’t talk about enough. That’s what bravery looks like in real time! You don’t just create content, you create an honest space for people to re-meet themselves in whatever version they’re currently in. It’s the kind of magic that doesn’t need to be announced it just exists, and people feel it when they orbit around it. You didn’t just show up on my feed, you showed up in a moment where I needed to feel like myself again. Like a song you forgot you loved until it comes back on and suddenly you remember everything. And somehow through outfits, honesty, humor, book reviews and a lot of zany ingenuity... you saved parts of my girlhood that likely make me a better mother. Thanks so much for being you! Thanks for being real. Thanks for taking up space, your energy’s reach is more powerful than you ever might have imagined. P.S... I have to add this because it lives rent free in my brain! That Taylor Swift workout series you did?!? absolutely unhinged in the best way It was funny and chaotic and somehow still motivating… I'm not deep in Taylor Swift knowledge territory, but it made me pause and go “okay wait... there’s something here.” The way she owns her work, reclaims it, redraws the line that I own me energy it felt incredibly aligned with what you were doing too. With love, light and gratitude, Stay Weird! -Lauren “I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.” -Louisa May Alcott

Eyesore: Echoes from Midian

Choke: Eyesore

Film: Nightbreed

Searching For Stars

Wanted Dead or Remembered : A Road Trip Through Myth, Memory, and the Wild West

Imagine: The Savage Was the Seer Enoch’s Echo, My Father’s Voice, and the Stories We Were Never Meant to Forget

The Girls of Rock and Roll: Rosey Blair, Chipette Energy, and a Very Special Kind of Magic

Click To Hear The Searching For Stars Audiobook Podcast!

Click To Hear The Searching For Stars Sound Track!

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