I’ve had the same song running through my head for three months. I don’t know why I haven’t tired of it yet. It’s nothing special. But it’s there.

When you hear a song, do you remember the first moment you encountered it? Maybe on the radio while driving on a dusky highway, or softly as part of the soundtrack of a coffee shop or floor shakingly loud in a club. Maybe you heard it as you first reached out to touch someone’s hand, maybe it was the day you left home for a long time. And when you hear it again, it all comes back. Music and memory fuse together well, it seems.

It’s different for this song because I sang it, I performed it as a public project. When you perform, you prepare and adjust and routinize the song to the point where the first time doesn’t matter anymore, only the last. That is the only time your audience will hear it. Even if you could sing it again for the same people, in the same space, at the same time, it would never be exactly the same.

Especially in singing, the performance is personal. The music literally comes from inside you. To use your voice not for the practicality of speech, but for music-making, is an exposure: an act of bravery. And so you rehearse and rehearse for the performance moment, perfecting every note, every glance, every breath. Finally, that moment arrives, and to the audience it appears that your energy and chemistry are spontaneous.

And then it’s over. All you have left is the melody playing in your head. You practiced it too many times to be bothered by it. It’s just there.

I wax and wane on songs from season to season, but when I’ve sung them, they become something different. They crystallize in my memory, transformed from something I consumed to something I created. They never sound quite the same anymore after I’ve made them my own.

I trained in singing for seven years. I sang arias from baroque operas no one performs anymore, patriotic gospel U.S. American anthems and a cappella renditions of Taio Cruz radio hits. Now, my technique is rusty. I mostly sing in the shower or my empty apartment. Once in a while, I’ll take my voice off the figurative shelf for an Open Mic night.

I remember every song I’ve sung, some better than others. They tell a story of time spent in practice rooms, churches and auditoriums, of auditions that ended in joy or tears and of classmates, friends and lovers who made music with me. Even after the last note evaporates and the performance, magical in its transience, is done, the score is written in my memory.

This song, and all the others, are still there. They always will be.