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.

Subterranean Homesick Blues: Searching for Stars in the Static

Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues wasn’t written for this era, but damn if it didn’t feel like it. Chaotic, fast, relentless. The kind of song that doesn’t wait for you to catch up. The kind of song that, even if you don’t understand every word, you feel it. That rapid fire delivery so urgent, so raw matched the energy of a world unraveling in real time. Every day, a new crisis. Every minute, a new breaking story. Every second, a fresh reason to panic.

You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

But in 2020, the wind wasn’t just blowing it was unraveling.

A gust of panic, a rush of headlines, a world tilting too fast for anyone to find their footing.

It started as a whisper, a ripple in the distance then a wave.

Two weeks, they said. Just a pause. Just a moment to catch our breath.

But the world inhaled, and when it exhaled, everything had changed.

The streets emptied. The doors shut. The static swallowed the silence.

Stay home. Stay apart. Stay afraid.

Or...

Look closer. See through the cracks.

Because the cracks were everywhere, and the truth was shifting like smoke.

The airwaves hummed with contradictions same song, different verse.

Wear this. Don’t wear this. Trust this. Fear that.

The rules changed mid sentence, and no one seemed to notice.

We weren’t driving anymore just passengers on a train with no stops, no conductor, no clear destination.

A loop of flashing numbers, scrolling warnings, voices crashing into one another until everything blurred into white noise.

And just as the world went quiet, the streets exploded.

Fires, protests, anger spilling over like a dam had finally cracked.

A summer of movement, of voices demanding to be heard.

An election looming like a storm cloud.

Everything felt inevitable, everything felt uncertain.

Everything felt like something out of a movie.

The world was coming undone at the seams, and suddenly, I was eight years old again, sitting cross-legged on the floor, listening to my dad unravel the mysteries of the universe government cover-ups, shadowy figures pulling the strings, the kind of theories that seemed too wild to be true, until suddenly, they didn’t. His voice echoed in my head through the static of 2020, through the chaos of lockdowns and shifting narratives, the flickering news cycles that felt less like reporting and more like a script we weren’t meant to question. We talked more than ever then—long, winding conversations where past and present blurred, where his old warnings suddenly felt prophetic. He’d always said the world wasn’t what it seemed, and for the first time, I understood what he meant. The fear, the manipulation, the way truth became something you had to dig for.

Dylan’s wisdom, like a signal through the static.

a reminder that this song had been playing long before we arrived.

A soundtrack to unraveling,

to waking up,

to seeing the world as it was, not as they told us it should be.

And then came the wake.

The post pandemic hush, the world stitching itself back together

with hands still trembling from what it had just endured.

But for me, the world had already unraveled.

My uncle.

My beautiful cousin.

Names slipping into the quiet, into the spaces where grief lingers long after the headlines fade.

October 2021 my father was gone.

Not from the virus, but perhaps “the cure” itself

From the healthcare neglect and the weight of everything after.

The loneliness. The isolation. The slow erosion of a man who had already weathered too much.

And I remember the music.

Dylan’s voice, steady as the stars, unraveling time itself.

A song that never stopped being true.

A warning. A reckoning. A hymn for those still searching.

Because the world didn’t stop.

The machine kept moving.

The outrage cycle spun on, faster than ever.

The next crisis, the next battle, the next thing to fear.

The pump don’t work ‘cause the vandals took the handles.

And here we are.

Still spinning, still reeling.

Still unsure if we lived through a great awakening or just got lost in another elaborate illusion.

Still trying to cut through the static, to find something true.

The music.

The past.

The voices that never wavered.

The ones who kept looking, never settling for the surface.

And so we keep searching. For light, for truth, for something steady in a world that won’t stop spinning. And still, Dylan’s voice remains woven through time, through memory, through the hum of history, reminding us that the song was always playing. We just finally started listening.

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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