Framing Devotion: On Music, Memory, and the Invisible Work of Witnessing

We all know the feeling—how music lodges itself deep into the soft parts of you. How one song, out of nowhere, feels like it crawled out of your chest just to meet you halfway. You hear it, and suddenly you’re not alone. The ache is mutual. The joy is shared. And you find yourself wondering: “How the hell does this musician know what I’m going through? We’ve never even met.”

That kind of connection messes with you. Because music doesn't ask your permission to matter—it just does. And when it does, you feel both selfish and wide open. Like a part of you wants to keep it to yourself, but the rest of you is glad a whole stadium’s worth of people also know the lyrics.

So I went looking for them. These artists. I wanted to see if the spell was real.

Getting to know these musicians, you see how working in the music scene is not easy. It’s a struggle. I’ve hung out with them, lived with them, I’ve broken bread with them, waited with them, heard the quiet versions of their stories when no one’s looking. And what I saw wasn’t a hunger for fame. It was the kind of need you feel when your lungs beg for air. A compulsion. A calling. A must.

I count myself lucky to have found them—these artists who made me stay—and to have learned from the way they moved, both onstage and off. But I’m also grateful for the ones who ran on the vibration of lack. The ones who saw scarcity where there was still so much to give. I’ve crossed paths with them, too. I watched their missteps, felt the weight of their fear, and made their mistakes part of my own education. There’s wisdom in witnessing what not to become.

When you witness extremes, from grace to desperation. You can’t walk away unchanged. Because as they grow, I grow. As they stumble, I feel the fall. And when they rise again? I carry that too—in my lenses, in my bones.

Everyone’s got their own invisible war, no matter how big the stage is. Fame doesn’t insulate anyone from pain. So I do what I can—I make images. I frame them the way I see them. As legends. As humans. As artists worth celebrating. Their light becomes my light. Their purpose, my own.

I fell into this industry with the curiosity of someone who didn’t know where else to place her gratitude. But I understood, early, that this wasn’t just business—it was a movement. Music isn’t something you exploit. It’s something you serve.

Your photos? An offering. Your time? A prayer.

And some days, when I start to forget—when the noise of it all drowns the why—I play the songs that saved me. I look at the photos I’ve taken, each one a timestamp in my personal mythology. I remember the bands I chased halfway across the country, all because I needed to say thank you the only way I knew how.

I’m still not done saying it.

I want the images to do more than document. I want them to elevate. I want them to whisper, Hey, this mattered. What you do is important.

And if no one listens? That’s fine. I know what I saw. I know what it meant. And that’s enough. I will always keep telling my story.

These days, everything’s faster. Easier, maybe. A swipe, a scroll, a like. There are more photographers now, more reasons to shoot. Some do it to be cool, to collect clout like bottle caps. And I get it. That’s the world now. But when the work gets hard—and it always does—what’ll keep you going?

Because if there’s no heartbeat behind the shutter, no reverence for what you're capturing, you won’t last.

I forget sometimes, too. The reasons blur. And when someone asks me why I do this, it feels a little like asking why I love someone.

I could tell you a thousand things.

Or none at all.