UNSUNG HEROES: With the Internet, the bedroom is the stage, and the world is the audience

By Steve Wildsmith
of The Daily Times Staff

The bedroom of recent Maryville High graduate Tarani Duncan isn’t far off from the stereotypical personal space of the average teenager.

A surfboard leans near the window; another, broken in half, hangs on the wall over her bed. Stickers proclaiming the greatness of rugby, pictures of Duncan’s dazzling smile alongside those of her friends, mementos of high school … on the surface, it speaks of a teen trapped in that awkward no-man’s-land (or, as the case may be, no-woman’s-land) between being a girl and becoming a woman.

On the desk is her computer — standard equipment for anyone in this technological day and age. What isn’t standard, however, is the peripherals she has plugged into it: a microphone. A small sound board. For all practical purposes, it’s a studio, designed to broadcast the music she makes for the world to hear.

Like a lot of aspiring artists in Blount County and around the world, Duncan has discovered the power of Myspace and other social networking sites as an outlet for her art. With an acoustic guitar, a voice that hovers somewhere between Tori Amos and Chan Marshall of Cat Power and the soul of a poet, she’s harnessed the Internet as a sort of digital diary, a window into the thoughts and emotions that swirl like fast-moving storm clouds across her young mind.

It’s a window that few of her friends know exists, and one that may never become the scope and size of something like, say, the gigantic glass panes behind the hosts of “The Today Show,” the ones where passersby on the plaza can stop and gawk and cluster and marvel.

Duncan’s window is more of a small casement tucked into an out-of-the-way alcove, a single pane of glass unnoticed by most but fascinating to those who decide to take a closer look and peer inside.

The art yearns for expression

“I think I’ve always been creative, as far back as I can remember,” Duncan says, cradling her acoustic guitar — “her husband,” as she jokingly refers to it — in her lap. “I just remember my step-brother, who was into music, and I thought he was a god.”

Duncan received her first guitar when she was 3; she learned to play “Wipeout” when she was 9 or 10, but it wasn’t until high school that she would begin to wed poetry with song. Born in Hawaii, she’s a military brat, and moved to Blount County eight years ago — about the same time she started getting into music. It was at Maryville High School, studying under Sarah Williams, that Duncan discovered poetry as a way to express the sensitivity she often keeps under wraps from her friends.

“I’ve always known I was really sensitive,” she says. “I latch onto people easily, and I’m more apt to get hurt that way, but I think I’m more apt to feel things more deeply as well. I’ve always been overly emotional, and I just love seeing everyone around me giddy — I like making people laugh, and because of that, most people don’t think I’m serious.

“Music, for me, is about taking those emotions I don’t show to people and putting them into a song. A lot of my friends would be surprised that I can carry a serious thought.”

Encouraged by her family — especially her step-father — Duncan gradually became aware of a desire within herself to put her music out there for the world to hear. She doesn’t publicize her Myspace music page; a few select friends know she has one, but most of the time, she lets those who hear it find her. Even when she’s with friends and one of her own songs comes up on her iPod’s shuffle feature, she hastily forwards to the next song. Only recently has she begun to take credit for her music.

“My step-dad, he and I have these metaphysical conversations about everything, and he said something the other night about art — about how if you put it out there for someone to hear, and they get something out of it, then that comes back to you, as the artist,” she said. “It helped me to see that what I do stands for something, even if it’s just me in my bedroom, recording. My music is something so important and sacred to me. I don’t feel like I should broadcast it, but if you stumble across it and appreciate it, that’s awesome.”

Thanks to Myspace, all the world’s a stage

Consider this — launched in January 2004, Myspace has grown to include more than 110 million monthly active users from across the planet. One in four Americans has a Myspace page, and, on average, 300,000 new people sign up every day. The site has been translated in more than 20 countries and territories, sees mail traffic of 50 million messages a day (more than Yahoo, Hotmail or Google), hosts 1.5 billion images (with 8 million new ones being uploaded every day) and includes more than 8 million artists and bands.

Myspace has become more than just a social networking site; it’s become a pop culture phenomenon and, to some extent, a determining factor in certain aspects of popular culture. Artists like Lily Allen, Sean Kingston and the Arctic Monkeys have been “discovered” on Myspace after starting out, just as Duncan did, putting their self-made songs out there for the world to hear. The company (acquired by Fox Interactive Media in 2005) has even started its own record label to discover and develop unsigned artists.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that everyone with a guitar and a handful of songs will become major-label stars. The chances are still slim that a girl from Maryville, Tenn., will find fame via Myspace, but at least the playing field is more level. And for some local users, fame isn’t even really a goal.

Blount County native Jordan Wilson, who graduated from Heritage in 2007, put up her Myspace music profile as a way to pay tribute to the late Channon Christian, murdered in a Knoxville car-jacking in January 2007. Wilson’s father worked with Christian, and when Wilson went to the girl’s funeral, she came away with the burning desire to do something.

“I went through the line, and I got to see her and how she looked, and I got to see her parents, and her mother just held me like a child,” Wilson told The Daily Times this week. “Something just really goes through an 18-year-old when you see someone murdered like that, and being held by her mom was just unbelievable to me.

“I just broke down, and I thought, I have to do something for this family. All they’re going to have are these bad things, so I wanted to get my emotions out on paper and try to help them.”

A friend had a studio at his house in Townsend; Wilson drew on her love of music and her gift of song and made the trip to record “Channon’s Song.” She had written numerous songs in the past, but this one was a project she followed through to the end.

“I would start writing and not put music to it, or I would pick up the guitar and not put words to the music,” said Wilson, who was inspired to sing by her late grandmother and was a member of the Heritage Singers for three years. “Right after she went missing, I started writing the song, and after she passed away, I recorded it. I just knew I had to get it out there, so that her friends and family would have something positive to hold up in the face of something so horrible.”

After putting the song up on her Myspace music profile, Wilson was contacted by members of Christian’s family, who expressed their gratitude for her tribute. Several of Christian’s friends have written, sending along their own thoughts of appreciation, and on top of the pride she feels for completing the song, the feedback has inspired her to continue her interest in music.

Like Duncan, she may never leave Blount County for Nashville or New York or Los Angeles. But with a computer, she can make her voice heard around the world.

“I really want to do more; it’s just a matter of time,” she said. “I have a lot of extremely musical friends, and I’m looking to collaborate with a few of them to see what we can come up with.”

Letting it out

Sometimes, in the Bible-black pre-dawn, Duncan awaits with an unwritten song pounding through her temples like a rush of hot blood. Without thinking, without deliberation, she grabs for her guitar and begins to write. Her mom and step-dad awaken sometimes to the muted sounds of her soft voice playing over melancholy, introspective or bittersweet chords. They smile and leave Duncan to her muse, knowing that she may never share it with them in a personal performance.

As she grows more confident in her own abilities, however, that may change. She speaks of performing publicly before she departs for Coastal Carolina University, in Conway, S.C., next month. She doesn’t even flinch — not a lot, anyway — when her friends hear her music. And, more than ever before, she finds herself opening her eyes to endless possibilities for inspiration, from other music to books (a Nietzsche book is tucked away beside her computer, and she’s reading Pablo Neruda now) to those around her (her step-father often challenges her to write a song a day).

The more she notices, the louder the muse seems to whisper within her. And the louder those whispers become, the harder it is for Duncan, like so many other musicians in Blount County and beyond, to hold it inside.

Fortunately, thanks to Myspace and other sites, the whole world’s a stage — or rather, the whole world is the audience, and the artist’s bedroom or living room or wherever they set up a computer with an instrument and a microphone is the stage.

It’s not fancy, and it’s not traditional. But it’s a sign of the changing times, and for those who may never set foot on a stage, it’s a new kind of freedom that’s never been afforded them before.

“I want to connect with people,” she says. “I’m so laid-back in funny or party situations, but in vulnerable situations, I’m so awkward. It’s hard to be awkward playing guitar and singing. It’s really easy to put myself into my song.”