'Coming Home' With Max Patel, CC '23

Upper West Side NY

17 September, 2021

4:56 PM

Description

Columbia Daily Spectator BY BELLA BROMBERG SEPTEMBER 17, 2021 Max Patel, CC '23, has always been fascinated by music's power to serve as an emotional release. In the opening lyrics of his song "Break the Fall," Patel reflected on the pain of a recent breakup that was exacerbated by the isolation and limited social interactions of the past 18 months: "Watch my sorrow dissipate/ I'm just stronger than the pain/ I know at least you're okay/ Watch my sadness eviscerated." "When I go to sit down to write a song, I just kind of pour it all out, right?" Patel said. "I think the best thing is when you grab onto the most emotional moment, or the thing that you're feeling the most deeply, and you kind of bring that out, you musicalize it." For Patel, who goes by the stage name Jayani, music has long served as a means of healing. Patel's style, which he self-describes as "acoustic singer-songwriter, [with] some indie electric elements," mirrors artists like Ed Sheeran, Jason Mraz, and Bruno Major—some of his earliest influences. One of Patel's first experiences with songwriting actually materialized out of the darkness. Writing became a means of processing tragedy. "The first year that I moved across from Hong Kong to America, I lost a close friend of mine. And so I started writing songs because of that. I wrote a song for him," Patel said. "Then I went back … and performed it for all of our friends. I saw the reaction of his parents and all of our friends and it was just this experience. I don't know... it was just like, I can't really describe it." Another original song in Patel's early repertoire came about in response to his move from his hometown of Hong Kong to Connecticut, where he attended Choate Rosemary Hall, a boarding school. "I just had all these conflicting emotions, like 'Wow, I'm leaving my childhood home. I'm leaving all my friends here. And I'm starting a new life.' So it was all about two worlds colliding," he said. Patel performed the song "Moondrops" at his middle school graduation to rave reviews. Students waved their flashlights back and forth as if they were in a concert, and something clicked for Patel—he fell in love with performing. Throughout his time in high school, Patel engaged himself in all types of musical endeavors. He sang in the chamber chorus and male a cappella group, and he nabbed leads in school musicals with ease. He wrote and released his first EP, "Progressions," took part in an independent study in songwriting, and performed at local bars, cafés, restaurants, farmers markets, and talent shows—if there was any chance to perform, Patel took it. In his view, the performance aspect and the artist's ability to directly impact listeners are the most rewarding aspects of the music-making process. Though Patel finds value in writing and recording music, he notes that everything in music traces back to some form of performance. "Recording is similar to performing because … every time someone listens to a song, it's like a performance, but just for them," he said. But I think the performing is just the best part, because that's when you really have the chance to impact [the listener]." Patel is still using music to heal, as well as to mark the transitions he undergoes. Most recently, he released an album consisting of mostly live demos to Soundcloud entitled "Coming Home," in which he guides listeners on a journey through his COVID-19 experience. This album features tracks such as "Chillin' With a Screen," a song that is about "our virtual reality [and] how we've adapted into this digital realm," and "New Age Love," which tackles topics such as social media, dating apps, and "how love seems more transitory, transactional, ephemeral." Patel went through "so many iterations" to get to the final version of the album, writing 80 songs before deciding upon the final ten tracks that would weave his story together. In its finished version, "Coming Home" consists of nine songs, plus one introductory track titled "Coming Back 2021," which serves to set the scene and remind listeners of what it felt like to live in the time of COVID-19. "I'm hoping that in the future, when this is all foreign and alien to even think about, the world being in lockdown for a year and a half, I wanted to kind of invite people in like, 'Hey, take a moment, take a breath, take a seat. We're just going to go back into that mindset, into that place.' Otherwise, the story doesn't really make sense," Patel said. For a recent class assignment to produce a personal musical autobiography, Patel wrote of "Coming Home": "The album is about returning to a sense of home and belonging, as I returned back home to Hong Kong this summer, and coming out on the other side of this whole thing. Coming home to regenerate and heal up, and get prepared and ready to go all-out, full speed ahead on to the next chapter." While the album focuses primarily on the general COVID-19 experience, it also follows the arc of a personal relationship of Patel's that coincided with quarantine. "The whole love arc is also a personal thing that not everybody experienced," he said. "But I wanted to connect it to a wider audience, or whoever listens to it will be able to connect to it because it connects to those things that we went through in COVID." Patel's favorite song on the album? "Break the Fall," a heartbreak song that he said was "very cathartic" to write. "That's the healing element. It's when you tap into that really deep, sad element, it also helps you express and get it out of your body and out of what you're feeling inside every day, you know, because then you can just express—you can sing that once, and then you're out of that arena, that space." Patel hopes that his personal experiences can be universalized through his music. "It's definitely the most raw, and I think it's probably the hardest to listen to if you're in a happy state," he added. "But if … you want to release something, you're holding on to that feeling, it really does … help to express that, to connect them to that," he said. The song that came quickest to him was "Archipelago," the second-to-last song on the album. He wrote it in just two hours. "Hong Kong is an archipelago. … So you had this whole journey, come back, the chapter is over, close it, kind of seeing it as a traveler going through a story and then returning home to the archipelago, and just being able to close the chapter, and be at home for a bit to regenerate before going off to the next one." The final song is the album's title track, "Coming Home." Patel describes it as "looking back on the whole, the whole overall narrative, and just appreciating it for what it is, looking forward, being excited. And then being here, here and now, and being present, and grounded." In a musical theater course on the day of our interview, Patel came to a new realization: One of the hardest things about music or writing music is about knowing what to musicalize. What is worthy of being turned into music? How does an artist decide what emotions, concepts, or themes are important enough to be set to song? And how does an artist go about doing that? There is unmistakable intentionality that goes into Patel's songwriting; he seems to grapple with all of these questions as he goes about his creative process. "And that's kind of what I want to make music for, to musicalize those deep emotions, those deep truths that we all have, and to pinpoint exactly how to do that. And there are so many techniques, but I want to make my own music that does that, that really connects to the most emotional experiences and musicalizes them. And pretty much my whole thing is about truth and healing. I just want to speak the truth and heal and help heal." Though Patel wrote "Coming Home" amid personal challenges and turbulence in the world around him, he sees the finished product as a creation that will provide himself and others with hope going forward rather than dwelling on the past. "I don't want to hold onto the sadness. But I want to hold on to the experience and be reminded of it so every time I look back, I'm always constantly going forward and being empowered by that. And that's what I hope it does for other people too." Staff writer Bella Bromberg can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @itsbellaabee Founded in 1877, the Columbia Daily Spectator is the independent undergraduate newspaper of Columbia University, serving thousands of readers in Morningside Heights, West Harlem, and beyond. Read more at columbiaspectator.com and donate here.