My Story

“Some things are easier to feel than they are to explain”

HELLO

I'm Matt.

A husband, a father of two, a son, a brother, a friend, and the life behind Lost Keys.

I grew up in Surrey, now living in Berkshire and have been influenced by music from a young age. Over the years, music has become much more than something I enjoy. It has become one of the ways I navigate life.

My mind is rarely quiet. I'm constantly thinking, analysing, questioning and trying to make sense of things. As an undiagnosed neurodivergent adult, I've spent a lot of my life trying to understand myself, where I fit and whether I'm doing enough. Identity, expectation and imposter syndrome have often been part of that process and something I carry around daily.

Music has always helped soften some of that noise. Not by making it disappear, but by giving it somewhere else to go.

When everything in my head feels busy, music can create a little space. It helps me regulate, slow things down and stay present for a little longer. Sometimes that's all I need to keep moving. Don’t get me wrong, it hasnt worked all of the time!

I'm passionate about music in all its forms. I don't really think about it in terms of genres or trends. I'm driven by sound and feeling — by what something does to me, where it takes me and how it makes me feel. I find peace and purpose in discovering music, creating it, producing it and playing it.

Life can be complicated. Its come with its own pressures, responsibilities and expectations. Some days feel easier than others. Some moments feel overwhelming.

Music doesn't fix any of that.

But, sometimes it helps me hold everything together for just a little longer.

That connection between life and music is where Lost Keys comes from.

I connect my life with music, and music connects me back to life.

MUSIC HAS ALWAYS BEEN THERE

I've always had music close to me. Not just as something to listen to, but as something to live alongside. It has been there through friendships, relationships, nights out, quiet nights in, good times, difficult times and all the ordinary moments in between. Some music is attached to people, some to places, some to periods of my life that I can still remember clearly just by hearing the first few seconds.

Music has a way of taking me back, and sometimes further back than I expected, which is the power of music.

I've always found it easier to feel something through music than to explain it in words. I'm always processing things in my head, turning them over, trying to understand them or find a way to fix them. Rarely does that work for me, most of the time it just creates more noise.

Music gives me another way. I don't have to explain anything to it. I don't have to find an answer. I can just listen. There are moments when that is enough.

A piece of music can give me somewhere to sit with what I'm feeling. It can help me stay with something uncomfortable instead of immediately trying to push it away. It can give me enough space to actually experience what is happening rather than spending all my energy trying to understand it and do something with it.

And sometimes, the understanding comes later.

That has become one of the most important things I've learned about myself. Not everything needs to be solved while it is happening. Sometimes a moment just needs to be lived.

Some things are easier to feel than they are to explain.

WHERE LOST KEYS CAME FROM

Lost Keys grew from that relationship with music. I became fascinated by the way music holds memory. A photograph can show you what a moment looked like, but music can bring back how it felt. You hear a song and suddenly you're somewhere else. You remember the room, The people. the smells, the conversations, also the person you were then. And sometimes you remember a version of yourself that you had almost forgotten.

What fascinates me is that the music never changes, but we do. A song can mean one thing when you are twenty and something completely different when you are forty. The track is the same. The memory is still there. But life has happened in between, and that changes what you hear.

I wanted to preserve that. Not just the music, but the life around it.

So Lost Keys became a way of taking moments as they happen and giving them a place to exist. I don't start with music. I start with something real.

A feeling, a period of my life, something I'm struggling with., something I'm excited about, something I don't fully understand. Then I find the music.

The music comes second because the moment has already happened. I'm not trying to make the music tell a story. I'm trying to let the music express the story that is already there.

THE MUSIC

Sometimes I know exactly what I am trying to say, and other times I have absolutely no idea. There are moments when I can sit down and know that I need something energetic. Something that moves. Something that gives me a push.

Other times I need something slower. Something deeper. Something that allows me to stop and actually be with myself.

And sometimes I don't want to be alone with it at all. I want to share it. I want people around me. I want the energy of a room. I want that feeling when everyone is listening to the same thing and, for a moment, nobody needs to explain themselves.

Those are the places that became Solitude, Motion and Connection.

Not genres. Not rules...

Just different ways of experiencing life.

THE JOURNALS

Eventually I realised that the music wasn't enough on its own.

I could make a chapter that captured exactly how something felt, but later I might forget why I made it or notcie a different relationship with the music later on.

So I started writing. The journals are my attempt to leave something behind for myself.

I write about what was actually happening. Where my head was. What I was feeling. What I understood and, perhaps more importantly, what I didn't understand.

I don't write them to explain what the music means. I write them because I want to remember what the music meant then.

Because when I come back to it years later, I might hear something completely different. Maybe I will realise that something I thought was incredibly important wasn't. Maybe something I couldn't understand at the time will finally make sense. Maybe I'll hear a track and be taken straight back to a time, a place, or a feeling I thought I'd forgotten.

That is the point.

The journal keeps the truth of the moment, while the music preserves the feeling.

KEEPING A RECORD

I think that is what Lost Keys has really become for me. A way of processing life and keeping a record of it as I go, and not just the good parts, but the difficult parts too. The uncomfortable parts. The confusing parts. The moments I want to celebrate and the ones I would rather leave behind.

I'm not interested in pretending life is neat, becuase it really isn't.

Sometimes we understand things immediately. Sometimes it takes months, sometimes years. Sometimes we never completely understand them at all.

But perhaps we don't always need to. Sometimes it is enough to have been there.

To have felt it. To have remembered it. And to have left something behind that allows us to return.

That is what Lost Keys is for.

It is my way of telling the stories of my life through music, preserving the moments as I go, and giving myself somewhere to find them again.

And perhaps, somewhere within those moments, you might find something of your own.

The feeling comes first.

The music follows.

The journal remembers.

The journey is ours…

THANK YOU

I make Lost Keys because it helps me. It gives me a way to experience things, work through them and hold onto the moments that matter to me.

But music is personal, and so are the journeys we take through life. What helps me might mean something completely different to you. Maybe a chapter brings back a memory, helps you understand something, gives you a way to express something you couldn't put into words, or simply gives you somewhere to be for a while.

If something in Lost Keys unlocks a feeling, a memory, an idea or a little more understanding for you, then that's more than enough.

Thank you for reading and for listening. I hope there is something here for you to take away.

Thank you, Matt.