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<\/p>\n
Robert Pattinson and Zendaya in the movie \u201cThe Drama.\u201d<\/p>\n
(A24)<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s becoming a delightfully frequent occurrence that Small learns after the fact that her music is featured prominently in a movie or television show. \u201cThe record company does what they do and then they send me royalties and I get it in a statement,\u201d she explains. \u201cI had a song that HBO bought for \u2018Pause With Sam Jay.\u2019 They sent me an email that was not even to me \u2014 it was this interdepartmental thing. At the bottom, it said, \u2018Oh, by the way, it airs tonight.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Jemma Burns, music supervisor for \u201cThe Drama,\u201d had been a fan of Small\u2019s album, thinking \u201cI Want to Lay With You\u201d would be perfect for this idyllic scene, right before Emma and Charlie\u2019s relationship implodes over a disturbing revelation that turns their dream wedding into a nightmare.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was trying to set up the rom-com tone,\u201d says Burns of the movie\u2019s writer-director Kristoffer Borgli, \u201cone that would contrast with the modernity of the setting and where the film goes. He wanted something that was from a bygone era, but also something that felt disarmingly charming. The two lead characters are very switched-on, fashionable, arty. So it felt like something they would\u2019ve had in their record collection.\u201d<\/p>\n
The youngest of five siblings, Small always loved singing. But even as an adolescent growing up in Harlem, she felt like an old soul, her thoughts running deeper than the average kid\u2019s.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy focus was on not understanding war and hatred and bigotry,\u201d she says. \u201cI was seriously into trying to make love happen everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
Against the backdrop of the war in Vietnam and the Black Power movement, Small was well on her way to becoming a hippie, a transformation amplified by her enrollment in a private Quaker boarding academy, George School, in Newtown, Penn., on a full scholarship. When she arrived at George School, Small recalls, laughing, it was \u201cvery rich and very white. But I\u2019ve always been a flotation device. I can walk around like I don\u2019t have a clue about things.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1775302513_28_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Shira Small, photographed in 1971 at George School in Newtown, Penn.<\/p>\n
(Courtesy of Shira Small)<\/p>\n
At George School, Small sported an Afro and smoked weed. She was drawn to theater and music, impressing music teacher and classical pianist Lars Clutterham, who saw she had talent. They worked on songs together, with Small coming up with the lyrics and vocal melodies. Every student had to complete a senior project, so Small proposed that hers be an album. Not long after, she and Clutterham drove to a Philadelphia studio for a one-day session.<\/p>\n
The 10 songs on \u201cThe Line of Time and the Plane of Now\u201d \u2014 each recorded in only one take \u2014 mix folk, soul and jazz, radiating innocence. The arrangements, awash in old-school analog warmth, are straightforward: guitar or piano supplemented with drums, leaving plenty of space for Small\u2019s lilting voice, which contains both idealism and, even as a teen, traces of real-life sorrow.<\/p>\n
Her mother died while she was at George School, inspiring \u201cMy Life\u2019s All Right,\u201d a ballad about surviving tough times, which later appeared on the Sam Jay show. \u201cEternal Life\u201d sprang out of her in one burst, celebrating the power of love to transcend life\u2019s harsh realities. As for the movie\u2019s \u201cI Want to Lay With You,\u201d it was about a boy Small liked. She just can\u2019t remember who anymore.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was somebody who was just as much a friend as a person that I had a crush on,\u201d she recalls. \u201cI honestly felt that we could have a life together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Small laughs at her adolescent self. \u201cLike I knew what it would be like to have a freaking life together! To be able to wake up with somebody and have a beautiful day and always make them smile.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Small, George School\u2019s parents and students raised money to pay for the album and 300 copies were produced. \u201cIt was a joyous time,\u201d she recalls. \u201cI was on my way \u2014 to somewhere!\u201d After graduation, though, she struggled to find her footing, eventually graduating summa cum laude from the City University of New York with a theater degree. But then she chose pre-med, becoming a physician assistant.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I became pre-med, it was so hard for me that I was just tunnel-visioned,\u201d explains Small about why she said goodbye to music. \u201cI had to devote my whole self to it. It was so all-encompassing that I could think of nothing else.\u201d<\/p>\n
But there was another reason she walked away from music. From an early age, Small suffered debilitating stage fright. \u201cIt was so bad that it would twist my stomach into a knot,\u201d she recalls. She gutted it out to do plays at George School and, later, record her album. After a while, though, \u201cIt just got to be too much.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, didn\u2019t she miss singing? \u201cConstantly,\u201d replies Small, who retired about five years ago from the medical profession. \u201cI sang unconsciously a lot. My patients always picked up on it \u2014 they\u2019d be like, \u2018Every time you come in, you\u2019re singing.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
But although Small abandoned music, \u201cThe Line of Time and the Plane of Now\u201d never went away. In 2006, the Numero Group, an archival record label, put together a compilation, \u201cWayfaring Strangers: Ladies From the Canyon,\u201d devoted to under-the-radar female singers from the 1970s. Numero Group co-founder Ken Shipley made sure \u201cEternal Life\u201d was included.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was the first person to ever reach out to Shira,\u201d he says proudly in a separate phone interview. Shipley heard \u201cEternal Life\u201d on a burned CD of femme-folk artists that was making the industry rounds at the turn of the millennium while he was putting together his \u201cWayfaring Strangers\u201d lineup. \u201cShira was a top want for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Numero Group put \u201cEternal Life\u201d on Spotify in 2013. But when the label released the full album digitally in 2022, \u201cI don\u2019t know that anybody really cared,\u201d Shipley says. Undeterred, he reissued it on vinyl the following year. Maybe listeners just needed time.<\/p>\n
\u201cMusic finds a way,\u201d Shipley says. \u201cMusic\u2019s like water. It\u2019s going to get down the creek into the river into the ocean. It\u2019s going to find its audience.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sure enough, strange serendipitous moments started happening for Small. A future bandmate\u2019s ex had one of her songs on a playlist, having no idea it was Small. She recently started working part-time at a local opera house and one of the opera singers adored \u201cEternal Life,\u201d unaware that Small was an employee.<\/p>\n
And now, royalty checks arrive for the usage of her songs in films like \u201cThe Drama.\u201d It still feels unreal to Small that her album generates revenue. \u201cIt was never for commercial purposes,\u201d she says. \u201cI can\u2019t believe that I am collecting any royalties on that music and that it just keeps going and going.\u201d<\/p>\n
Small\u2019s husband died in 2019 after 34 years of marriage. It sent her spiraling, but then something remarkable happened. \u201cThe day I came out of it, the music was gushing out of me so fast that I couldn\u2019t keep up with it,\u201d she says. \u201cI had to walk around with a voice memo. I hadn\u2019t spoken to Lars in more than a decade. I sent him all of these voice memos and he sent me a note: \u2018Shira, you still got it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2024, she released her first song in 50 years, \u201cWhy,\u201d which lays out her fears for the world. Her voice is different, deeper, possessing a lifetime of experience that her teenage self couldn\u2019t have possibly imagined. Small is now plotting out an album and has some shows lined up. Even better, she\u2019s worked through her stage fright.<\/p>\n
Eventually, she\u2019ll perform her old songs, but she\u2019s figuring out how to hit that higher register from her youth. \u201cI\u2019ve gone through decades of hormones and cigarettes and all the other things that I did that I\u2019m happy I lived through,\u201d she says, wryly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still have a thing about yellow flowers in open fields,\u201d she admits. \u201cWe have these huge sunflower fields here. The whole idea of being in such a beautiful place with yellow flowers that light up a great day is what popped into my head when I wrote that lyric.\u201d<\/p>\n
I ask her what she makes of that young woman she hears on \u201cThe Line of Time and the Plane of Now\u201d today.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know her so well,\u201d replies Small. \u201cYou know why? Because she\u2019s still here. I am, at this point, everybody I\u2019ve ever been ever, leading up to this moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still feel the same way about many things,\u201d she continues. \u201cI\u2019m probably angrier now than I was when I was a child, but I still have this underlying thing about looking at a bigger picture to help me keep my lid on. When I think back on \u2018Eternal Life\u2019 and \u2018My Life\u2019s All Right,\u2019 that music was born from my core. And my core does not have an age.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Early in \u201cThe Drama,\u201d things are still good between Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Robert Pattinson). The young happy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":584896,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[6979,64,63,32904,134,34255,286371,8280,28544,15460,136,286373,286372,28852,6984,34256,4209,1547],"class_list":{"0":"post-584895","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-album","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-drama","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-first-time","14":"tag-george-school","15":"tag-life","16":"tag-line","17":"tag-movie","18":"tag-music","19":"tag-shipley","20":"tag-shira-small","21":"tag-small","22":"tag-song","23":"tag-thing","24":"tag-way","25":"tag-year"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=584895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/584896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}