ACT 3: The Night a Family Became a Band

A family finds its rhythm—just long enough to remember what harmony feels like.

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It’s 7:13 p.m. inside the Songa Mansion, and outside, it’s raining.

Not a storm—just the kind that soaks the earth without asking. The kind that makes you listen.

Inside, the lights are low. The room smells of incense and old pine. Vintage lamps line the walls. In the corner: a piano, two guitars, a bass amp, and a circle of hand drums.

Several musicians—some local, some Songa regulars—have arrived with beat-up cases and curious eyes. Most have played together before. But not like this. Not with a family in the middle.

The Spellings sit in a wide semi-circle, instruments scattered nearby—a keyboard for Aaron, a ukulele for Sylvie, an open mic between Emerson and Erin.

Tonight, they’re not spectators. They’re part of the band.

Sage Storries and Lewis Blues anchor the session, setting a tone somewhere between a jam, a therapy session, and a live demo.

They’re not here to perform. They’re here to help a family hear itself.

Sage watches the rain trace the glass. Then Aaron—curled in the corner, hoodie up, barely there.

The only reason Sylvie and Aaron agreed to come was that they could each bring a friend.

Sylvie did. Aaron said his friend got sick. But it’s clear—he didn’t have one.

He hasn’t spoken all day.

Earlier, Sylvie teased him about his hoodie, his posture, the way he avoided eye contact.

“Don’t cry in front of my friends like you always do, ya twerp.”

Aaron didn’t respond. Just sunk deeper into the corner.

Lewis catches Sage’s eye. Sage nods toward Sylvie and mouths, “Gentle.”

Across the circle, Sylvie whispers to her friend, giggling, but her eyes keep flicking back to her brother.

Erin sits nearby, quietly tracking everything. “He won’t talk,” she tells Sage. “Not about the depression. Not to us.”

Sage turns to the rain. Then, softly: “Let’s just let it rain.”

Lewis hears it. Starts playing something low.

Sage steps into the circle and sings: “We’re butterflies emerging / trying to take flight…”

Lewis adds: “But what about wings broken / from all the weathered pain…”

The melody finds them.

Aaron doesn’t move, but his foot stops bouncing. Sylvie shifts. Her friend watches her now.

Erin sets down her mug.

“You don’t have to say it,” she tells Aaron. “Just let them play it.”

Sage continues, voice like breath: “Some days I can stay / some days I must run…”

Lewis: “But hearts don’t break the same / and yours is safe with me.”

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Aaron’s arms uncross.

Emerson sits frozen. Then: “He gets it from me. The depression. I’d disappear for weeks. Still take meetings. But I wasn’t there.”

No one fills the silence.

Sylvie blurts: “And you still aren’t, dad.”

Her friend glances at her. No one else moves.

Lewis shifts keys. The band follows.

Emerson takes the mic. Not to fix. Just to feel.

“But I’m trying now,” he says, gentle. “I really am.”

Aaron looks up. Just briefly.

Sylvie nudges him. “Play something,” she whispers. “You mess around on that dumb app. Try it for real.”

Aaron shrugs. Then mutters: “It’s not dumb.”

It’s not a declaration. But it’s something.

The first thing he’s said all night.

No one claps. No one rushes.

The rain keeps time outside. And inside, something opens.

Erin closes her eyes. She just breathes. For once, she’s not holding everyone else’s breath too.

Earlier, she told me: “I sell people dream houses. But I don’t know what a real one feels like.”

Tonight? She’s holding her daughter’s hand. And she’s not letting go.

All four of them were medicated. Each on their own SSRI.

Managed. Muted. But not connected.

Antidepressants suppress depression. But they don’t create joy. They dampen the storm.

But they don’t write the song.

That’s what Songa is trying to do—Turn the feeling back on.

This isn’t therapy. This isn’t a clinic. It’s therapeutic entertainment.

Its elusive cofounder, Wyoming, once wrote: “SSRIs are anti-depressants. Songa is pro-emotion.”

You can roll your eyes. I did.

But tonight? I’m watching a family come back online. One note at a time.

The song ends. But the playing doesn’t stop.

Lewis slides a keyboard toward Aaron. He presses one key. Just one.

And the band builds around it like it matters. Because here—it does.

Afterward, Sylvie asks Sage to teach her the chords. Aaron doesn’t say anything. But when Lewis offers to show him a bassline—he stays.

That’s how it starts here. Not with fixes. With invitations.

The room settles. The evening ends.

Emerson lingers near the piano, watching Sage coil a mic cable.

“I used to think founders and artists were nothing alike,” he says.

Sage doesn’t look up.

“Now I’m not so sure,” Emerson continues. “We both try to conjure something from nothing.

We both chase visions no one else can see. And we both lose people when we get it wrong.”

Now Sage looks at him. “My dad used to say music was a hobby, not a life. When I dropped out of business school, he said I was throwing my future away. When I didn’t come home, he cut me off. It wasn’t grief that ended things. It was control.”

She breathes in.

“A year later, a woman reached out. Her teenage daughter wanted to be a songwriter—but her parents made her choose something ‘stable.’ She asked if I’d mentor her. I said no. Then I couldn’t stop thinking about her. She was me. Helping that girl chase her dream brought me back to mine.”

Across the room, Erin flinches—subtly.

She’s not just listening. She’s recognizing something.

This dream they’re chasing—it was Emerson’s. And she said yes. Because saying no didn’t feel like an option.

She’d signed on, thinking it was a shared dream. But now I’m seeing it never was.

Erin’s chatting with Sylvie and her friend, but listening to Emerson as he says to Sage, “Yeah. We’re both addicted to something we can’t ever quite grasp. I built systems to feel in control. Chased visions no one else could see.

And I missed real moments,
for an imagined world.
No more fake. I want to live
in what's real—right now.

Sage shrugs. “We just wired different.”

Erin looks toward them. She’s watching the man who dragged her into a dream she didn’t ask to dream. And realizing how small she’s let herself become inside it.

Earlier, she told me, “I sell people dream houses. But I don’t know what a real one feels like.”

Tonight?

She’s not closing deals. She’s cracking open her own foundation. Trying to imagine what it would mean to feel at home in her own life.

But how do you renovate something while still living inside? And how do you make space for someone else’s dream… without erasing your own?

Outside, the rain hasn’t stopped.

But it no longer sounds like sadness.

I couldn’t have known how brief that reprieve would be—not for me, but for Erin and Emerson.

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