“Go tell you own story/ Go chase you own dreams,” sings Auna Sims on her debut single, “Right Place,” an exploration of identity reminiscent of ’90s singer/songwriters. “I wrote this song when I was struggling with the ‘Why try again’ questions,” said Sims. Right before she was to audition for the head of the Symphony in her native city of Atlanta, she was suddenly struck by an idiopathic injury to her hand and arm–meaning it was from an unexplained source.
She was prodigiously gifted piano player who grew up the oldest of ten musically gifted children in a house where music infused everything, and had studied classical performance all throughout her childhood and adolescence. Auna was prepared to embark on a post-secondary education centered around the study of the piano. She was devastated.
Music consumed Auna though, and she persevered. Always a fan of classical music, her tastes broadened to include indie music and pop music–insofar as The Beatles and the like mean pop music. Because she had to create, because there was no version of herself that does not make songs come into being, she began to play the piano one-handed. Within these limitations, she developed her performance and her voice. She kept the music to herself and she wrote song after song.
“The struggles lead me to my crumbs of truth and those crumbs tend to grow and turn into hope. So, a crumb of hope made this song,” she says of her undying love of music.
Through this hardship, she asked herself, “Does success determine art or is the drive to create and express true beauty? My faith to write this song came from the smallest piece of belief that I am always in the right time and the right place to be who I am.”
As she sings in the song, to herself it is fair to infer, “You’re in the right time/ in the right place to believe.” And, in fact, you always are.
