Macon Magazine

June/July 2024 | maconmagazine.com 43 to-my-current-life-state thing. Everything that I put out, I feel like, 'Yes, this is it. No, this is it.' Everything that I make, I sort of have that experience, at least for a very short time, of feeling like, 'No, this is who I am. No, this is who I am!'" Deep down, she knows. She knows exactly who she was, who she is, and even in some small part who she'd like to become. Such foresight and hindsight is a rare gift, one Scott has worked hard to cultivate, and also one that gives her the opportunity to return home on her own terms. It also lets her look back on Macon now through more of a soft-focus lens and gaze, with understanding, grace, hope, and real beauty. "And a great deal of it," she adds. "There's a lot to love and to cherish about my time in Macon, which relatively now feels like a short time considering I've already been out of it for 14 years. It's almost as long as I lived there, which is really shocking to me to even say aloud. But yes, there's a whole lot to love about that place and about my place in it for sure." So, can you come home again? Scott's path shows that "home" is created, not given. As to whether the Bragg Jam performance will feel like a homecoming for the artist – why not show up to find out? the cause either. It was the very thing Scott needed, a pull from out of the shadows and into the light. Enter celebrated artist Jenna Gribbon – known for her work exhibited globally and in the Frick Collection on New York's Madison Avenue, commissioned for filmmaker Sofia Coppola, and later this year, in Paris, France – who met Scott on a night out at a bar in NYC's East Village. The two fell in love and were married in 2022. As "mutual muses," Scott credits her wife for much of the positive growth in her own story. "I think [the growth came from] just actually having a feeling of being loved and cared for," Scott reflected. "Of actually having a loving home to come home to. I've always had a loving home. My parents were always free loving, but this additional factor of not having to hide, actually getting to be exactly who I am all the time has just opened up an incredible dimension for me that has made me very happy." With all of these philosophical observations at the forefront of the conversation, it's easy to assume that Scott is sitting pretty on the top of the self-actualization mountain, both personally and artistically. She'd argue that's hardly the case. Sure, she's come a long way in the way of self-fulfillment as a person; but coming into her own as an artist? Oh, she's just getting started, she said. "The fun part is that I feel like I'm always doing that," she said. "I mean, from the beginning, I put out my first record in 2013. I've never put anything out that I didn't feel like was the most honest, pertinent- TORRES takes the Bragg Jam stage at JBA in Downtown Macon on July 27th at 8:45 p.m.

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