Meet Marissa Postler (Mar in Color)

Today we’d like to introduce you to Marissa Postler (Mar in Color).

Hi Marissa, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers.
Above all else, I am an artist at heart, and I use the word “artist” as an umbrella term that encapsulates my #1 true love of music and so much more. Today, I sing my heart out, write songs, play piano, arrange and produce all different kinds of music, paint, sew, design, and create all sorts of projects throughout my home and wardrobe. But for many years, I was drowning in self-doubt and meandering around pretending I didn’t already know what I wanted to do with my life.

I grew up in Wisconsin, and as a kid, I knew exactly who I was and what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was a singer, so naturally, when I grew up I wanted to be a pop star. Well, that is until ten-year-old me discovered Avril Lavigne and Evanescence and my dreams shifted to rock star pretty much overnight.

But for as long as I can remember that was all I ever wanted, all I ever dreamed about. Every year I would watch American Idol and daydream about how great it was going to be when I turned 16 and could finally audition. But I never did. Because as I actually got older, I didn’t have the confidence. When I got to the end of high school, I told myself I wasn’t good enough to be a music major, and frankly, I didn’t think there was any chance of me actually going to a four-year college for financial reasons, so I never even let myself explore that path.

If I could go back in time I would love to tell Little Mar that it’s their JOB to teach me how to be better at music! If I was already a perfect musician I wouldn’t even need to go! But I didn’t know that, so I got an apartment with my best friend right after graduation, and started working towards my “more realistic” dream of becoming an interior designer.

It took me about half a semester at my local community college to get really depressed and drop out, and I spent that winter in a pretty dark place. But when spring came, I gave myself the much-needed gift of a fresh start and moved across the lake to Grand Rapids, MI with a part-time job at Costco and no real plan.

Luckily it only took me about a year of that to realize that working 60 hours a week at two jobs to barely scrape by wasn’t very fun or sustainable, and I started exploring the idea of going back to college – this time at Grand Rapids Community College. I was still pretending I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, until one day when I couldn’t plug my ears any longer and ignore the little voice that had been shouting at me the entire time.

I laugh now when I tell this story, but my moment of clarity actually came while I was watching the movie Pitch Perfect. The plot’s not that serious – there’s a whole lot of a cappella singing and some goofy moments, but I just absolutely lost it and started sobbing uncontrollably while watching it. I couldn’t watch other (even fictional) people live the life I wanted and knew deep down was meant for any longer. So the next morning, I called the GRCC music department and enrolled.

The thing was though, I still had no idea what my plan was. I just knew that I had to study music. Not for any specific career path, but for ME. I had to follow my north star. But there were still more decisions to make! I knew for sure I still didn’t have the confidence to study performance, so my other two options were music education or recording technologies. Essentially, was I a cool rockstar or a nerdy schoolteacher?

For one semester I dipped my toes in both, but ultimately I chose what I felt was the most “responsible” path, or rather, the one that was most likely to lead to a full-time salaried job after graduation. I thought back to my experience in high school choir which was the one place where I ever truly felt like I belonged, and came to the conclusion that even though I may not be “good” enough to go out and become a rockstar myself, I could find purpose and fulfillment by creating that kind of space for all the other Little Mars out there. I could be the adult I needed when I was younger.

Now that I kind of had a plan, I continued to take the path of least resistance (AKA lowest risk of failure or rejection). I still had really low confidence as a singer and really never found my stride in classical music, so I didn’t even entertain the idea of applying anywhere other than Grand Valley State University to finish my degree. Despite having to sing in front of people regularly as part of my studies, I still experienced the worst stage fright imaginable every single time.

I was so nauseous and afraid of throwing up, that I wouldn’t be able to eat for 24 hours surrounding a performance. My first year of voice lessons was mostly just me crying, and it took a lot of hard work over several years to gradually overcome that anxiety. Still, when it came time for my senior recital, I didn’t put up posters or invite anybody because I was embarrassed at how bad I thought I was.

That really didn’t change until the summer after my first year working as a music teacher for Grand Rapids Public Schools. They tell you your first year of teaching is going to be hard, and mine was especially so because right in the middle of the school year, I was blindsided by a major breakup. I had been living with that person for 4.5 years which was long enough for us to have combined the majority of our furniture and other household items.

So when I left, I essentially had to start over from zero. That whole transition was really messy and downright awful, but as soon as I spent the first night in my new solo apartment, it was so clear that this was the beginning of a much more fulfilling and authentic life for me.

For the first time since childhood, I started writing songs again at age 26. Little Mar used to love writing songs, but she didn’t have the skills to turn them into more than just melodies and lyrics, and frankly, she didn’t even know that those skills were something to be practiced, not something people are born with. So she wasted a very long time believing that her dreams were out of reach and not even trying.

One of the very first songs I wrote was the opening track on my album, Jesus Issues – I Didn’t Know I Wasn’t Me. It’s wild how we sometimes don’t realize how much we’ve lost ourselves until we manage to come back to ourselves. That was definitely how I felt as I got to know myself again post-break-up and finally gave myself the space to do all of ten-year-old Mar’s favorite things. I was writing songs, I was painting, but I still struggled deeply with confidence as a musician.

One of the first, most pivotal moments that led me to where I am today actually came from an online fan community for my favorite sad indie rock band, The National. In the private Facebook group lovingly called “The National Sorrowposting,” I posted a short clip of me singing a mashup of an older song of theirs over a song from their new record, asking if anyone else noticed the similarity between the two songs. Nobody said a word about the mashup, and instead, I was immediately showered with more love, support, and encouragement about my singing than I had ever gotten from anyone before.

That gave me the courage to finally start recording and uploading covers of more songs by the National and other artists. I will never forget the amount of support I got from that community – not just encouragement but also tangible help with things like recording equipment and software. Without them, I have no idea how much longer it would have taken me to start finding my voice.

Now that I had physical and emotional space to myself AND a supportive group of people encouraging me to put myself out there, I finally started throwing myself into music. I ended up writing a whole album during that year of Single Mar, which ended up taking me a total of three years to finish and release. I still had so much self-doubt and so many skills to develop – not just writing the songs and learning how to sing and play them, but recording, arranging, producing – the whole nine yards!

The thing is, every time I overcame another layer of self-doubt, there was a new layer to battle. I overcame my fear of singing in front of people (kind of), but I definitely didn’t overcome my fear of playing piano – or performing. The entire time I worked on that album, I was totally lost because I had no real goals attached to it. I still didn’t believe I was good enough to play shows or sell CDs or anything. I was just making the album because I needed to for me. My motto throughout this process was By Myself. For Myself. Against Myself.

I needed to do this by myself because I was too insecure to walk into a studio and say “Hi I’m a musician please help me make my music even better.” I needed to do this for myself because it had been eating away at me since childhood. And I needed to do this against myself, or rather in spite of myself because I was struggling deeply with executive dysfunction despite wanting nothing more than to finish this album.

I ended up getting an ADHD diagnosis around this time, so I really felt like I had to defeat myself in order to succeed at this massive goal. The entire time, I was literally having nightmares about what would happen if I suddenly died in a car crash and never got to finish and release the album. I was haunted by the idea that none of the people in my life would ever see me the way I so desperately wanted to see myself – as a musician. A real one. And a good one.

As a side note, I need to add an asterisk to the words “by myself” because aside from some wonderful friends who recorded instrument parts for me, there is one other person to whom I need to give a LOT of credit – my now husband, Aaron. I could write a really juicy and exciting series of novels outlining our whirlwind romance in the midst of COVID-19, but that would probably take me at least another three years to finish, so I’ll spare you those details for now.

But I absolutely could not have done it without him. He mixed and mastered the album which was a really long and tedious process as we were both still learning. And he really held my hand the entire time as I oscillated between crying in the bathtub over how I should just quit because I’m not good enough and getting angry and overwhelmed by all the new technology I had to learn and troubleshoot.

In the midst of all this, I even lost all my files and had to start completely over about halfway through! But I didn’t give up and he didn’t give up on me. And finally, on my 29th birthday, I released Jesus Issues out into the world (okay, the internet).

At that time, I made no effort to play any shows or put myself out there really, but a few opportunities found me anyway, and I gradually came to realize that maybe I could actually do this. I just need to practice. But then life happened as it did, and I found myself really struggling physically, mentally, and emotionally for the next year and a half. A lot of great things happened in that time – we took a lot of amazing vacations and even got married! But behind the scenes, I was not okay.

I was drowning in anxiety over my teaching job and finding it impossible to fall or stay asleep at night. I was constantly nauseous so I wasn’t really eating, which caused me to gradually become underweight and frail. I was having what felt like migraines but without the headache. I would push through each day and it took everything I had in me, so I would spend the rest of the evening face down in my bed, unable to look at lights or screens or do anything – even fall asleep.

I felt like I was trapped inside a useless body with a restless mind that didn’t have an off switch. I bailed on a lot of plans and became pretty depressed. And perhaps worst of all, I was constantly losing my voice, barely able to do the one thing that lights up my spirit – singing. I knew something had to change, so last spring I decided to give myself the most precious gift of all – time. I allowed myself to go part-time in the fall and figured I would spend the extra time giving my body some rest while also figuring out what I was going to do with my life because teaching just wasn’t working for me long-term.

When the school year started, I had three mornings to myself each week, and I was determined to utilize them well. They say when the student is ready, the teacher appears, and in this case, the teacher was The Artist’s Way, a classic guidebook for creatives that’s structured like a 12-week course and focused on unblocking your creativity and nurturing your inner child/inner artist (spoiler alert, they’re the same person!).

After reading just the first chapter of this book, I was able to finally admit to myself something that I hadn’t DARED to admit before in my entire adult (and teen) life. I finally admitted to myself that my ultimate goal in life is to just be a full-time artist/musician. PERIOD. Not a music teacher. Not a waitress by day/musician by night. Just a person who fills their time creating music and art and sharing it with the world.

Right around the same time, I had the epiphany that the only thing actually stopping me from having the voice of my dreams was time and money – money for lessons and time for practice. So I started taking lessons again, but this time from an instructor trained in pop/rock, not classical singing. My spirit began coming back to life even though my body continued to wither away.

It wasn’t until I hit a breaking point in October when my symptoms got much worse that I realized that my health was too important and I couldn’t go on living a shell of a life any longer. I took medical leave from my job, went to countless different specialists, got sent in a million different directions, and received conflicting info from many of them, and ultimately none of them were helpful at all.

When my leave ran out at the end of the semester, I felt I had no choice but to walk away and figure things out myself like I always have. I was scared but I also felt so free and empowered and optimistic thanks to all the inner work I’d been doing this whole time.

In another miraculous case of “when the student is ready, the teacher appears,” right after I quit my job, I managed to stumble upon a dietician who specializes in the kinds of problems I was having and actually takes my insurance, so I decided to give up on the useless specialists I’d been seeing and try a different approach. I am SO grateful that the universe dropped her in my lap because I started feeling better almost immediately after working with her!

I can honestly say that being chronically ill was the best thing that could have possibly happened to me. I never set out to become a teacher in the first place, and it was time to move on. I’ll always be grateful for the growth experience and life lessons I gained from that chapter of my life (not to mention my husband and several of my best friends!), but it was never meant to be my path long term. Had I not been struggling so badly, I would have never found the guts to walk away. I never would have found the guts to want more for myself.

Now that I DO want more for myself, I could not be more excited about the future. I’m still in a period of transition, but I’m working on a lot of really exciting things behind the scenes. For one, I’m gearing up to record my second album in the next few months. Jesus Issues will always have a special place in my heart, but this time I have a product I really believe in and the confidence to really put myself out there, so I’m giving this album everything I’ve got.

I wrote those songs during a dark period of my life and I know if I get them out into the world where they can actually reach people, they’re going to help someone. I just have to be brave enough to put myself out there if I want my art to have an impact on the world. While I have huge dreams of building a successful music career for myself, I am also a deeply practical person and I now have a much greater understanding of how these things work and how long they take.

So I am also currently in training to become a life coach, with the goal of helping guide other creative souls toward conquering self-doubt and realizing their dreams as well. I am so excited to not only create music and art but also help give others the kind of support and encouragement I so desperately needed all those years ago.

I finally feel a sense of peace and purpose that I didn’t think was possible even six months ago, and I’m still really far from all of my goals and dreams. The difference is that now, I’m actually on the path and I’m moving forward in the direction that my soul has been calling me toward for as long as I can remember. I’ve come to realize that happiness doesn’t come from achieving a certain goal because as soon as you reach one goal, you end up setting a new one.

It comes from living a life that’s aligned with your soul’s purpose and making progress on those goals. It comes from continually growing, learning, and evolving into a better version of yourself. After I reach my current batch of goals, I can’t wait to set out on my next batch, which includes going back to school for art, writing a book, starting a podcast, and maybe someday even a fashion line!

I’m really proud of how far I’ve come and really excited to see how far I’ll go. In the meantime, I’m also having fun picking up the pieces from my last couple of years. In January I launched into a fun Year of Color project where I live my life in a different color each month. It all started with Mar in Darkness to honor an EP I had just released with my husband, electronic bass music producer TechTonic, called Darkness in Me – check it out if you haven’t!

Since then, I’ve been Mar in Red, Mar in Green, and now Mar in Blue! In addition to giving me a fun excuse to build creative outfits, it’s also given me a framework for catching up on all the miscellaneous projects I’ve left unfinished for the past couple of years. Instead of being frozen by indecision and overwhelmed, I’m working my way through the list color by color – making clothing music videos paintings home decor projects and so much more!

Looking back on this entire story, I could not be more grateful to have landed where I did. I may be from Wisconsin technically, but I am 1000% a Michigander at heart. The universe didn’t just plant me somewhere different – it planted me in a city and state with the most welcoming and inclusive music scene I could possibly ask for.

My journey has been a gradual one and there are many, many people who have contributed to my transformation by forcing me out of my comfort zone or simply being there and SEEING things in me before I could see them myself. If you are one of those people, thank you. I love you. And as I continue moving forward on my journey I hope to pass the torch and inspire and help others the way you’ve done for me.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Definitely not! I mentioned a lot of them already so I won’t rehash all of them. But I’m very grateful for my jagged, non-linear path forward, and I hope it inspires and empowers others to realize that it’s not too late to start now. I love the saying “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today.”

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
First and foremost, I’m a singer/songwriter with piano as my primary instrument. My music falls somewhere in the indie pop/rock spectrum (what even are sub-genres anymore??) with a heavy emphasis on lush, symphonic arrangements and chaotic, driving percussion. As a former choir teacher, I am deeply obsessed with vocal harmonies and love arranging choir parts, as well as string quartets, brass trios, and whatever else I feel like adding to a song!

I’m definitely not a minimalist and struggle to get into music that’s completely stripped down and stays gentle throughout. I love a really long, intense build-up, a manic switch-up, a singer reaching for a note at the edge of their range and just throwing their whole heart into it, a weird experimental eight-minute song at the end of an album… I love chaos, intensity, and deep emotion. And sadness. I like to think I’m not that sad of a person, but then I look at my record collection.

It’s been interesting for me to marry all of that with the fact that I’m a solo artist. My first album was made entirely at home mostly by myself as I mentioned earlier, but in a perfect world, every time I perform I would have like 20 people backing me up – a full rock band, string quartet, brass trio, and choir.

I’m really looking forward to putting on a big album release show when my second album comes out so I can finally hear what my music sounds like with real humans bringing it to life. This will also be my first time recording in a professional studio and trusting a stranger with my project, and I’m really excited to hear what the final product ends up sounding like and how collaboration can bring my sound to the next level.

I’ve recently realized that one thing many of my favorite artists have in common is a certain level of unhinge (think Fiona Apple, Fetch the Bolt Cutters), so that’s something I’m going to work on for myself as I keep writing – being a little less “hinged!” I also believe that good music is really vulnerable, to the point where the listener is almost uncomfortable for having been pulled so intimately into the artist’s soul (think Julien Baker, every album).

That’s one thing I’m really proud of with my upcoming album, Violets Bloom. There are some parts I genuinely avoid singing because they’re uncomfortable for ME so I really want to be sure to capture that level of vulnerability when I’m recording.

One thing that sets me apart from other singer/songwriters is that I also have one foot in the EDM world thanks to my husband, Aaron. I feel so lucky to have found not only my regular soulmate but also my MUSICAL soulmate in him. While we have different home genres, ultimately we look for a lot of the same things in music – melodic, emotive, and what we’ve started calling “heavy vibey.” We also have complementary skills so we are never in competition with one another but we both get to bring something different to each other’s music that makes it better.

Lately, I’ve been performing with him a lot because we just released the Darkness in Me EP together back in December on the darkest day of the year. His project, TechTonic is really fresh and innovative as he aims to bring a fusion of natural and electronic sounds together.

In the EDM world, the focus is mostly on DJing with very few artists actually bringing live elements into their performances, so it’s been really cool to watch him grow as an artist and get to be part of that growth. These days, if you go see a TechTonic show, you’ll generally hear all original music by him layered with live saxophone, keys, vocals by me, and sometimes other instruments or other guest vocalists – rappers, beatboxers, there’s always something new!

I would love to find more opportunities to collaborate with artists outside of my home genre. It’s really fun to have different “buckets” to write for, and I love how it allows me to just write whatever comes out and worry about where it will belong later. I’m also excited to explore more experimental production for my own music now that I’ve gotten so enmeshed in the EDM scene.

I recently went to my first producer’s retreat thinking I would just hang out while Aaron and the other EDM guys did their thing, but I ended up having a ton of fun writing in unfamiliar genres and leaning into new sides of my sound. So I’m excited to hear what my next batch of music will sound like!

Another miscellaneous project I’m really proud of is a symphony I arranged for our wedding last year, made up of all different melodies and fragments from every song Aaron and/or I have ever written. I felt that it deserved to be heard by more than just the people who attended our wedding so I recently made music videos for each movement featuring footage I took in the Redwoods, one of the many stops on our six-week honeymoon road trip. Be on the lookout as I continue releasing those one by one!

In addition to music, as I’ve also mentioned, I really have a passion for all different mediums of art and it’s a goal of mine to go back to art school sometime in the next few years. I’ve always said that I’m good at art in my brain and not in my hands, but now that I understand how a growth mindset works, I know that I absolutely can and will get there. As I allow my hands to catch up with the ideas in my brain, I’m really excited to incorporate more visual art elements into my project and allow my creativity to spill into whatever area it wants.

I chose the name Mar in Color because it represents everything that I am – I’m not just a musician. I’m a person who lives their life in color and I love letting my creativity and self-expression bleed into everything that I do. I love painting, sewing, mixed media/collaging, and attempting any miscellaneous project for my home or my wardrobe that my brain dreams up!

I also have ideas for a book, podcast, TED talk, you name it! I’m finally at a point where I know I am going to do all of these things at some point in my life. I’m just really excited to watch it all unfold and see what order they end up happening in! I don’t know what the future holds for me, but it’s going to be filled with creativity and growth, and that’s all I could ever ask for.

One last thing that sets me apart from others is a total curveball – I also have a side career in politics! I serve on the Wyoming City Council and have been doing so since I was first elected eight years ago at age 23. It’s really important to me that we start to normalize younger people, and people from all different backgrounds outside of politics holding political office. I believe very strongly that local politics are as important, if not more important than national politics, but these systems can only work for us if we lean in and participate.

We can’t be upset that the people in charge aren’t looking out for our interests if none of us are willing to step up and fill those roles ourselves. I had no idea what I was doing when I dove headfirst into local politics eight years ago, but I’ve learned and grown a lot since then and I am looking forward to running for re-election again this fall.

What does success mean to you?
I would define success as living your life with intention, in alignment with your truest self, and moving forward in that direction. There will never be a point of arrival, but if you’re on the path your soul is calling you to be on and you’re moving forward, that’s even more fulfilling than achieving any one specific goal.

At the end of the day, you need to be doing what lights YOU up. Not your parents, not society, not people who lived hundreds or thousands of years ago. I believe very strongly that EVERYTHING IS FAKE – all of the rules and expectations that many of us have accepted as fact were simply made up by somebody! Therefore you should throw everything that’s not serving you in the trash and aggressively be yourself.

Live your life out loud and don’t let anyone put you in boxes you don’t belong in. As long as you’re staying true to yourself and you’re continuing to move forward and evolve into better versions of yourself, I’d say you’re successful in my book.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.musicartrelease.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mar_in_color/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hellomarincolor/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@mar_in_color?sub_confirmation=1
• SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/mar_in_color
• Other: https://linktr.ee/marincolor

Image Credits
Chelsea Whitaker Photography, Covert Perspective, and Robbie Fischer (Dogtown Studio)