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.

Three Is a Magic Number

Dear Kids,

My beautiful darlings before you ever heard this song, I did.

And while I don’t know when exactly I heard Three Is a Magic Number first…

I remember I was a kid myself, sitting at the Shannons house.

The Shannons.

Somewhere between the sound of laughter in a house that wasn’t mine, but felt like home.

Between the flicker of a well-loved VHS, rewound until the tape ran soft.

Between the slow, golden stretch of afternoons where time moved like honey—thick, warm, endless.

Where the air smelled like old books and something sweet.

Where a song like this could slip into the background,

catching in the walls, in the corners, in me before I even knew to hold onto it.

Back then, it was just a song.

A simple tune, a lesson set to melody.

But the thing about music, about places that shape you, is that they don’t really leave.

And years later, when I heard it again, I realized it had never left at all.

Carl’s House.

A video rental from Blockbuster.

A bowl of popcorn between us, Jessie and I stretched across the floor, pressing play on Never Been Kissed.

I loved movies.

I liked getting lost in stories, in characters, in soundtracks that felt like they carried pieces of something bigger.

I don’t remember the exact moment it happened, but somewhere between Drew Barrymore’s awkward charm and the soft glow of the TV screen,

a song I knew by heart came floating through the speakers.

Three Is a Magic Number.

Only it wasn’t the version I grew up with.

It wasn’t a cartoon bouncing across a classroom monitor or childhood friends T.V.

It was Blind Melon.

It stopped me in my tracks, even as I lay there on the floor,

even as the movie kept playing.

It was like someone had taken my childhood, stretched it out, pulled it through the radio, spun it into something new not erased, not replaced, but grown.

At twelve, maybe thirteen, I was right at the threshold.

Old enough to start curating my own taste, young enough for nostalgia to still hit like a wave.

I was just starting to understand music not as background noise,

but as something personal, something alive.

I was shifting from Disney soundtracks and pop radio to a world that felt bigger; alternative, grunge, indie, songs with layers, meaning, emotion.

And then, here was this song.

This simple, familiar melody, a bridge between the past and the future, between childhood and whatever came next.

Blind Melon was cool.

Schoolhouse Rock was my childhood.

Hearing them together felt like a secret handshake, like proof that my past and present weren’t separate things, but part of the same orbit.

I burned it onto a mix CD soon after!

Not just because I liked it, but because it had grown with me.

And maybe that’s what music does.

It lingers, it evolves, it shifts its shape to fit the moment.

It becomes part of you, waiting in the background, until suddenly, it steps forward and says: I’ve been here all along.

Pregnant with You.

By then, music wasn’t just something I loved.

It was something I trusted.

Something I leaned on.

So when I found out I was pregnant, I did what felt natural...

I played music for you.

Headphones pressed against my belly, a quiet world waiting to hear its first song.

I liked to imagine the sound waves floating through, wrapping around you like a melody before you even had a name.

I played you Bill Nye the Science Guy episodes and so much Schoolhouse Rock, the same songs that had once filled my childhood.

The same songs that had lived inside the hum of a VHS player, in the laughter of afternoons at the Shannons’ house, in the flicker of a rented movie at Carl’s.

And when I played Three Is a Magic Number, I played both versions.

The one I had grown up with, and the one that had grown with me.

Maybe you heard it.

Maybe you felt it.

Maybe, even then, the music started shaping you, the way it had shaped me.

Now.

Now, there are three of you.

Three little voices filling the house.

Three sets of feet stomping across the floor.

Three pairs of hands clapping, dancing, reaching for the sky.

You don’t just listen to Three Is a Magic Number.

You live it.

You love it.

You sing it at the top of your lungs, jumping, laughing in the glow of the TV screen.

The old Schoolhouse Rock songs I played for you in the womb they’re still here.

Only now, they echo through the living room, through the halls, through the walls.

Our old DVDs, scratched from love, get pulled out over and over again.

Yesterday, I stood in the doorway, watching the three of you,

singing a song I once sang.

And in that moment, I saw it all.

The Shannons’ living room.

The VHS tapes.

Carl’s house. Jessie and me on the floor.

A mix CD, burned in a teenage bedroom.

Headphones on my belly.

A family of two, becoming three.

And now...three becoming everything!

Three was always a magic number.

But I never knew just how much

until now.

Love,

Mom

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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

Three Is a Magic Number

Blind Melon: 3 Is a Magic Number (School House Rock)

Film: Never Been Kissed

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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