Amber Mark

My mother definitely plays a big role in my life and in my work. The majority of what I've created has to do with her passing and how I dealt with losing the most important person in my life.

I went down the creative path in my teen years, and when I was in high school, in my junior year, I would perform at this program that was very similar to 'School of Rock.' That was when I started writing and realized that's what I wanted to do.

Writing by myself in my bedroom is definitely where I feel most creative.

I was always in love with the idea of making music - and always wanted to be involved in either the creative side or the industry side.

When I wrote 'Monsoon,' I always imagined the music video being shot in India. The song had so much to do with my time in India with my mother as well as leaving her in India during the monsoon season to visit my family in N.Y. It really was a dream come true when I was given the opportunity to shoot in India.

Lose My Cool' is the second track on my EP dedicated to a stage in the grieving process. This track represents anger. I really bottled a lot up after my mother passed, and one day, I couldn't handle it anymore and just exploded on all of my friends and family. It was a very passive way of dealing with things, not very healthy.

My friends and family unknowingly tend to get in the way when I'm in my creative zones.

I do talk about hard times, but I also try to bring out the light.

I've heard stories of other people that are similar stories to me - their mother or father passing away. People have come out to me on Instagram. It's amazing that they can tell me and confide in me. I always want to take the time and write these long messages telling them how much that means to me.

I think I have a harder time writing about things that I am not actually going through.

Music can be a way for me to think back a lot of the time, almost like an opening into all the nostalgia I never express.

Once I accumulated a bunch of sounds and learned how to use Logic, I was like, 'Wait a second, I don't need to work with any producers. I can do this on my own.'