My Epic (Trailer Music) Love Letter to Mr. Hans Zimmer

Because my love is so much deeper than UJAM or fan girling scores

Mr. Hans Zimmer is one of the loves of my life, said enthusiastically, from the time I can remember. My first live concert well before running into Beyoncé in the flesh on a regular basis age 12 onwards, like I mean for real, Beyoncé to most is on Instagram and comparing yourself to her in person off and on duty as a performer and contemporary is beyond torture HAHA! Well, it was Mr. Zimmer’s The Lion King score performed live for all of us kids by one of the city orchestras rolling into the concert hall field trip. I want to say Springfield, Illinois or Chicago, Illinois. My memory fog doesn’t serve me well.

Mr. Z working that Louis Vuitton at the Oscars in the 90’s

So yes, you can go on my YouTube channel, and I lost some of my old blog posts on my former blog from Squarespace hosting, about my love for promoting UJAM and its assorted products. I’m a regular person. All three founders of UJAM, Pharrell Williams, Peter Gorges, and Hans Zimmer, are people who are about the self taught music life. They know so much about synths and computer technology in the mastery of music. They believe a computer is a musical instrument in itself you learn to play. The brand is about empowerment and kindness. Pretty significant when you learn how jarringly sexist, ableist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic, and racist this beautiful world of the music industry has been for centuries. Wagner is banned in Israel, I heard, over his anti-Semitic views.

In penning this socially awkward diary, where I gruesomely imagine my life post-death and feel like, what might Nicole…no SHOULD HAVE Nicole as me, my beautiful inner self, have told the world? Well, the love story.

I’m in love with many things and people. The journey of H.G. Wells, my obsession from age 14 when I came back home from The Fellowship of the Ring and said, if that happy Kiwi couple can make the biggest movies ever and dream them up in the Middle (of Nowhere, to Hollywood folks) Earth in New Zealand, a gal like me can do the same thing. It’s fate, destiny, passion, lots of hard work, and not much more. The spoken and written word, heck with it, the written musical note typed by Logic Pro or perhaps in every handmade note jotted down in a teenage girl’s tacky notebook, that is me. It made me believe it’s all real. I love doing spur of the moment speaking to pals, like I am now. My “writing” at the moment is insignificant. I am speaking, TALKING to you, friends as this comes on.

And Mr. Zimmer always did that for me. I was the gal who was between worlds. Classically trained in music class enough to be a snooty snob, too far removed from elitism and the higher education system of music and coastal USA upbringings to be a “real” composer someday. I went to NYC often from age 14 onwards, at one time lived there straight for a year and a half, and no matter what I did, I could be telling people about the time I met a young pre-presidential Barack Obama or how the Midwest was full of culture of past and present, and to the people in NYC, almost usually people who themselves who never grew up in the boroughs at all, I was asked questions or given statements about being “different.” Sorry, maybe I didn’t know “different” was being a good person who was and is as justified at having a cool career as you are. The snobbery. Oh, it changed when people found out I had graduated from UT Austin. “Do you have lots of farmland and dogs to run around?” I’ll whisper you the name of the real famous comedienne/actress who asked me that. Umm, no. Austin is a major city? “Do you see cattle walking by your university windows?” Sure I do, when I hop into my H.G. Wells time machine to the early founding of it. And there was great shame, I found, in the music of Americana: country music. Which I found endearing, my great aunt and uncle’s home in Urbana, Illinois always having it on. I learned structure and passion from it.

So here comes along a gentleman who wasn’t part of a Hollywood dynasty like so many and winning an Oscar on live television. Younger me instantly thought he was cool. He was the name I dropped to my music teachers in seventh grade onwards when Gladiator, my fave film ever came out, flawed as it is, because I knew if he could do it, I could do it. I was told by some teachers how crazy it was to see fragments of myself and who I could be in men who looked nothing like me in age, sometimes of race or other characteristics. I didn’t care then, and I don’t care now.

I love that you, Mr. Zimmer, are still at this incredible life of film scoring and don’t listen to anyone else on how to rule your career trajectory. You could have retired, you maybe could have gone right into sipping martinis poolside in Cabo for eternity, but no, you keep on at it with Dune movies and these incredible products at UJAM you have no reason to put out anymore. You don’t need to prove yourself and keep on doing it. It’s beautiful. Your love for music is contagious to all those who you encourage to come on in, when the film scoring world can so often feel cold and unwelcoming for anyone who doesn’t have the right look of what a composer ought to be. And you make people so happy. So, so, so, so, very happy and inspired.

I hope someday you are remembered for the contributions you bring to enrich this world and make so many want to be like you.

This letter could be a scroll, and must I say, video may have killed the radio star, but it never killed the film score star who is a true gentleman rock star to all people of all ages, genders, and nationalities who dreamed big because of you. 🎹❤️ Every one of us has bad days. Mr. Zimmer, may you always be comforted by knowing on your worst days when you feel the sky is crumbling down that you bring joy to people through changing the world with your art and inspiring all to carry on your beauty you bring, to the best ability we can, one day at a time. Who knows how many people will forever become legendary film score composers because of you. I hope to be one of them. Someday, when I score my dreams paired to a grand orchestra from the year 802,701 AD, the soundtrack to my life and my Time Machine film series I pull off, I know you will be the reason I did so.

With love, xoxo,

Nic