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.

The Cable Guy: Premium Cable, Premium Memories

The Cable Guy

I was raised on music, movies, and the kind of pop culture that burrows into your brain and never leaves. Some kids grew up learning life lessons from their parents. Some from older siblings. And some of us? Well, let’s just say there’s a reason we speak in movie quotes and song lyrics like it’s second nature.

If you were born in the ‘80s and raised in the ‘90s, you know exactly what I mean. TV, radio, and whatever movie you had on VHS weren’t just entertainment...they were background noise for your entire childhood. We memorized sitcom morals, flipped through CD booklets like sacred texts, and built entire personalities around whatever was playing on MTV that week.

And sure, maybe that makes it easy to draw comparisons between me and a certain overenthusiastic cable installer. But let’s not get carried away. Besides, unlike Chip, my friendships have always been entirely voluntary.

Which brings me to Stephanie.

Stephanie was the kind of friend who made life more fun just by existing. She had this perfect mix of casual coolness and contagious excitement never forcing her interests on you, but making you want to love whatever she loved. She introduced me to so many things, but one of the most lasting gifts she ever gave me was The Cable Guy.

I met her my freshman year of high school and we connected almost instantly, though not just over movies. We both knew what it was like to lose someone who meant the world to us. There were gaps in our lives, spaces where people we loved should have still been, and somehow, in that unspoken understanding, we found a kind of comfort in each other. She once told me I reminded her of someone she had lost, and I took that as one of the greatest compliments I had ever received.

I was about fifteen when she let me borrow The Cable Guy, probably sliding the DVD over with a casual, “You have to watch this,” like it wasn’t about to change the way I saw comedy forever. It was a school night, sometime in the evening. I curled up in bed, snacks nearby, and pressed play, unaware that I was about to experience my first real taste of dark comedy.

I instantly loved it. The weirdness, the energy, the way Jim Carrey twisted his usual manic charm into something both hilarious and unsettling. And then the karaoke scene happened.

Chip Douglas throws himself into Somebody to Love like his life depends on it. Carrey’s version is… unhinged. He turns it into a full-blown, manic performance that is both comedic and unsettling. His screaming high notes are borderline terrifying (in the best way possible). I loved it; I absorbed it. It became part of me. And obviously it also made me think of Jefferson Airplane, a band I had already loved in passing but would now forever associate with this scene.

Stephanie was more than just a great friend—she was a bridge, connecting me to people who would become some of my closest friends in that season of life. Through her, I truly got to know Clint, Ricky, and Daniel. I had classes with some of them, but it was because of Stephanie, and her connection to Clint’s older brother, that I ended up in their circle. That’s the thing about friendships like ours—one good person has a way of leading you to other good people, and before you know it, your world is a little bigger and a lot brighter.

And then, of course, there was the Marilyn Manson flag.

Now, to be clear, I was never a huge Marilyn Manson fan. Not that I had anything against him—he just wasn’t my thing. Truthfully he kind of scared me a little. But Stephanie? Stephanie had this Marilyn Manson flag that she no longer wanted, and she decided I should have it. I wasn’t sure what to do with it at first, but then I realized it had an unexpected secondary use: as a deterrent.

At the time, my stepdad had a revolving door of less than ideal drinking buddies, many of whom had an unfortunate habit of stumbling into our house, using the bathroom outside my bedroom, and generally disrupting my peace. But as it turned out, nothing clears a hallway faster than a giant, looming Marilyn Manson flag. Something about his piercing eyes and skeletal aesthetic was enough to make even the drunkest of men reconsider their choices. Stephanie had unknowingly gifted me not just a piece of band merch, but a personal security system. And to this day, I don’t think I ever told her just how well it worked.

By the time I graduated high school and started finding my footing in the world, people had already decided who I was... the hippie. It wasn’t just about music or the way I dressed; it was the way I carried stories from an eclectic past, the way I talked about nature like it was an old friend, the way I gravitated toward spirituality and Native American customs like they were stitched into me. I had a deep love for music, a respect for the earth, and an instinct for finding meaning in the smallest things. So when my dad looked at me in my early 20s and said I reminded him of Grace Slick, I knew exactly what he meant. It wasn’t just the dark hair and bangs it was the energy, the aura, the quiet but undeniable presence. And honestly? I wore that like a badge of honor.

The Cable Guy was the beginning of something for me. It introduced me to a kind of humor I didn’t know I needed. It led me down a path that would later include Death to Smoochy and a dozen other films that took comedy to darker, stranger places. It became a comfort movie, the kind you revisit not just for the laughs, but because it reminds you of a specific time, a specific feeling, a specific version of yourself.

Stephanie gave me a gift in The Cable Guy and a Marilyn Manson flag that once gave me unexpected protection. Life is weird like that. It hands you moments, little gifts wrapped in absurdity and meaning, and sometimes you don’t even realize their value until years later.

The end of The Cable Guy always kind of lingered with me... two people lying in a satellite dish, looking up at the stars. Because even after everything, after all the noise, all the absurdity, all the chaos, all the reruns and rewinds, we all end up doing the same thing in the end. Searching for stars.

< Older Post

Newer Post >

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