VH1's Sound Affects

I ask you: Would a self-respecting woman go on national television and talk about her family's greatest tragedy, air the "dirty laundry," and talk about how great it was to have left her parents' home at the age of 14? My answer is yes. For better or worse, that's just what I did.

My friend Christine and me, on the set after the interview.

I met a VH1 film crew in far east Chinatown on April 25, 2000 to be "shot" for a segment on a new series called Sound Affects that will premiere in two months. Although I thought the filming location was initially a crack house, I discovered that it was used for only slightly less benign purposes. The place was actually a venue for "adult" activities. (The film crew apparently didn't care for the impromptu set either, since they threw their schedule out of whack trying to find another location.) After the shoot, I had a bit of fun being silly posing for photos, and it made for an unusual backdrop to talk about my life's experiences. And after talking with another interviewee who spent many of her teen years without electricity, my life seemed very ordinary.

But that's the beauty of Sound Affects, a show that will feature the lives of ordinary people and how they were affected by the music of very extraordinary people. If you're reading this article, you already know that the extraordinary person who affected me is Sting, accompanied by his outstanding bandmates, Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers.

My accomplices: Lynn and Christine.

For the low-down on how I got the gumption to leave a not-quite-nurturing household as a teen, read The Power of Sting. It's the article, thanks to my Managing Editor here at Suite 101, that prompted VH1 to contact me. Before my face was powdered and my mike attached to my shirt, I knew in order to help people understand the true effect of The Police's music on my life, I had to talk about my aunt's murder.

Flashback to 1983. I was happily residing with my maternal grandparents. Shortly after 1 a.m. in the early morning of December 7, I answered the persistent ring of the telephone to hear the breathless sound of my cousin Dan's voice. My aunt-his mother-had been shot. She'd been shot by her elder son, a 19-year-old who the psychologists later said was plagued by low self-esteem and whose mind and soul were compromised by the abuse of drugs and alcohol. The unfortunate culmination of his abuses and his penchant for "running with the wrong crowd" ended in disaster. For him, and for our entire family.