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

She Gave Me a Beautiful Window Back to My Soul: Healthy Is the New Skinny (A letter of light and gratitude for Katie Willcox)

By Lauren Nixon-Matney • February 2, 2026

I don’t remember deciding to look in the mirror. I was already there, half-awake, the house finally quiet in that fragile way it gets after a feeding. Same bathroom. Same light. A body that no longer belonged only to me, still learning its new outline. I tilted my head, not with panic, not even sadness just habit. Like checking a bruise you already know is there. Like waiting for an apology that isn’t coming. What annoyed me wasn’t what I saw. It was how quickly my brain tried to narrate it. The subtle inventory. The mental before-and-after photos. The unspoken timeline of when I was supposed to “feel like myself again.” I remember thinking, with a tired little laugh, Wow. I just made a human. And I’m still doing this. Still scanning. Still measuring. Still standing here as if my body hadn’t just done something borderline miraculous. And the most unsettling part wasn’t the criticism it was how normal it all felt. Like this was just part of motherhood. Like this quiet self-surveillance was simply another thing you were supposed to carry. I didn’t necessarily feel it all at once. There was no dramatic breaking point. It was more like a quiet irritation that refused to go away. The kind that taps you on the shoulder while you’re trying to move on. I remember standing there thinking how strange it was that my body could do something as massive as bringing a whole person into the world and somehow still be treated like a problem to solve. How quickly the conversation had shifted from look what you did to okay, now fix it. I hadn’t failed at anything. And yet, the language in my head sounded like I had. That’s when something finally clicked not so much with anger or rage, but with clarity. This wasn’t intuition. This wasn’t health. This wasn’t even coming from me. It was inheritance. Passed down quietly. Polished to sound responsible. Framed as care. And once I saw that, I couldn’t unsee it. Katie this is where you enter the story… Someone who said the thing out loud that I had only felt in pieces. Someone who named the difference between discipline and disconnection. Between health and harm. Healthy Is the New Skinny didn’t tell me what to do with my body. It asked a better question altogether: What if the problem was never your body in the first place? That question rearranged everything. You gave me language where there had only been pressure. You replaced noise with permission. You handed me tools not commandments and trusted me enough to use them. And that trust mattered. Because the moment I stopped fighting my body, I started listening to it. And the moment I started listening, I realized how long it had been trying to take care of me. It felt like getting this beautiful window. Not to change myself or crawl through but to finally see clearly. I kept thinking about how these things actually get passed down. Not through lectures. Not through rules. But through the tiny stuff. The comments made in passing. The jokes you barely even realize are jokes. The way you talk to yourself when you think no one is listening. Especially kids. Especially daughters. It hit me one night, sitting on the edge of the bed, that someday they wouldn’t need me to explain any of this to them. They would just pick it up. The same way I did. The same way most of us did. Quietly. Without consent. That realization felt clarifying. Not heavy. Just honest. Some patterns don’t need a big exit. They just don’t get invited into the next room. And because of you, Katie, I found the strength to stop fighting myself. To stop trying to fit my body into some mold it was never meant to belong in the first place. To me, you are truly one of the most beautiful women and souls in this universe! Beautiful is the woman who breaks cycles. Beautiful is the voice that replaces shame with truth. Beautiful is someone whose work doesn’t just inspire it liberates. Thank you for changing how I live inside my body. Thank you for changing how I mother. Thank you for helping me choose health over punishment, presence over performance, and confidence that doesn’t ask permission. You saved me in ways you may never know. Thank you so much for opening the window. I’m raising the next generation with it wide open to limitless views of beauty! Lauren