There is healing magic in sound. Before humans had language, before we could put quill to paper, or image to screen, we made music. The earliest instrument is believed to be the drum, but the most powerful will always be the voice. It comes from within and transcends our bodies in ways no other instrument can. Sabrina of Fairy Best Life – the space she has cultivated to share her musical and spiritual journey with the world – is proof of the power of music.
Sabrina was born to the world of performance and took to the arts early. Yet, it was when she discovered her aptitude for singing that she discovered her inner-truth. Through song, she has connected with people of all walks of life and in all forms, whether they be winged, or yet to discover their wings. Our conversation unveiled so many facets of the musical (and magical) worlds that will ring true for quite some time; as long as there is song, there is hope.
LaKase: So, can you explain to me what your relationship is with Fantasy? Have you always been a Fantasy fan?
Sabrina: The answer is yes. The short answer. I grew up on musicals. My parents are both in the arts. The Wizard of Oz, Cinderella, Brandy’s version, Disney animation, it was definitely what I grew up on. I started reading Harry Potter super young, and everything that I did came from an imaginative space and trying to create the world that I dreamed in this reality. And that took me towards crafting a lot. Then, also, I would write some short stories and then eventually transferred into writing songs and music.
I started in children’s theater and that’s a level of immersion into the storytelling world. I would craft corsets out of construction paper, and I roped my sister into all of these shenanigans, of course. There was this show called Out of the Box, that blew my mind, on the Disney channel. I only relatively recently realized what a cornerstone it was for like the person that I am. The whole premise of the show is they got all these boxes and they dictated out in the, in the theme song, [singing] “take one box, put it with another, let’s look for one this long and wide”. And, then as a result created this clubhouse that when they entered the clubhouse, it magically transformed into this huge play space full of paintings that you could jump inside, and meet the characters, and stories that came to life. There was such an element of crafting and creating to then allow the world that you’re living in to become one and the same with the fantasies and the stories in the paintings. That whole premise is just how I lived my life as a child. I was collecting sticks and turning them into wands and putting them in my little treasure box. I was designing our room to be like Candy Land by sticking candy on the wall. And I was like, now it’s Candy Land!
I recognized as I got older it was less and less a part of me, or it was less and less acknowledged. I started to shift towards the constructs that are in place of “what am I supposed to be doing? What role am I supposed to have in society?” As a result, I obviously still stayed in this creative sphere, but the Fantasy element definitely took a step back. I’d say only relatively recently I found my way back to it. It’s always been there, you know, and I think that’s how we eventually got here because it never really left.
LaKase: That seems like a recurring theme for a lot of us who like Fantasy, feeling like you can’t really outwardly express it. What was the impetus for you to say to yourself that maybe this is okay?
Sabrina: I was born into the arts and then it just stayed with me. I started in theater and then gravitated towards being the more singer-songwriter artist, still, bringing it into the theatrical when it comes to the performance element. I went to school for it and had a lot of really awesome opportunities come out of it that. But it started to lose the magic that called me to it in the first place, and it started to become very much about strategy and not so much about the arts, and the passion, and expressing of the passion, and connecting with people. I love connecting with people, and I aimed to do that with my music. I started to lose sight of that. I started to not really love music, and that was a when I had a moment of “whoa, who am I if I’m not doing music?” There were a few low points, but with this one in particular, I was really just kind of like hands in the air, like, I give up! I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what to do next. And, as I’m in my bedroom, in this space, this headspace, I looked up, and because everything had sort of turned off, you know, in that surrender, it was like I was finally seeing.
I was looking around and I saw that I had this sunset forest landscape tapestry, and then I had these fairy jars on the walls, and I have all these vines, and flowers. I was looking around my bedroom and I realized that I had very purposefully transformed my bedroom into this enchanted garden, like a fairy land. And I thought, “I’m a fairy. I’m literally living it.”
Everything I gravitate towards, I kept trying to unknowingly force Fantasy into what I was doing, but it was disconnected, because the songs that I was writing were for this mainstream pop audience. There wasn’t enough Fantasy in there, yet I was trying to take all the most fantastical photos and it just wasn’t matching with the music. Then, all of a sudden, I was like, “oh, because I’m not fully embracing who I am.”
It was like I just remembered. My music it needs to feel fantastical, because that’s how I’m experiencing the world. I’m experiencing the world in a very fantastical way and that’s the truest way to communicate it. In the process, because I was also healing my relationship with art and music, I turned towards spirituality. I’ve always been a relatively spiritual person, but since this particular turning point, it’s now one in the same for me. The evolution spiritually has seen itself through me finding my wings, and finding my voice, and finding my community of people. I took a deep dive into spirituality, learning about crystals and astrology, learning about herbs, and different healing properties, journaling and manifestation, and self-care rituals from a place of love, appreciation, and gratitude. All those things just helped me find my way back inward.
LaKase: It’s so interesting to me, how you mentioned all of these signals were all around you, but it’s like, you can’t see the forest for the trees when you’re trying to keep up with what the world tells you you’re supposed to be doing. When you give yourself permission to be like, “this is who Sabrina is, this is what my music is going to be,” I can only imagine what that does to people in the audience who need to see that as well
So, you’ve developed your own voice with the arts that’s rooted in Fantasy and you being a fairy. What stories are, or did, inspiring you now? You mentioned Out of the Box. What pieces of those stories are you bringing into your art?
Sabrina: Totally. I’ll add to that Peter Pan, for sure. Yeah. I married my own Peter Pan, actually [laughs]. So, Out of the Box was definitely [one], as far as the agency to build your own world with your own hands, creating and bringing into this world what you imagine. Cinderella with Brandy. I have this goal that I’m not swaying from, that I will have what I call my creative castle. That’s my humble abode, but it will basically look like the interior of Brandy’s Cinderella with that whimsical, rounded, colorful –
LaKase: Like, color and light textures?
Sabrina: Absolutely. Absolutely. My wardrobe is one hundred percent from that world, like the glitter, the patterns, the swirls, the colors. Whitney’s fairy godmother has always meant so much to me, and I only about a couple weeks ago realized that she is the embodiment of my actualized self, my fully evolved self. For many reasons. You know, obviously there’s a kinship I share with her with the big curly hair. My hair journey has been such a journey and she just looked so flawless and glamorous.
And Peter Pan, just this reality being one that is parallel to that alternate Neverland, and it’s like you can bring Neverland with you into this reality.
The key is just to believe in oneself, and to never grow up, because the truest self is the child self. If you can get back to that and follow that I think you’ll experience the most fulfilling version of life.
Read the rest of Sabrina’s story and more in Issue 2, available now!
