In an auditorium filled with expectant students, parents, and grandparents, exchange student Helen Weber takes a seat at the piano at the center of the stage. The crowd hushes excitedly in recognition. “She’s the girl that sang that awesome song during PrimeTime. Just wait, this song is incredible,” students whisper. Yet Weber reaches up to the microphone, and with a simple statement in a plain voice, she shocks the audience. “I was going to sing the other song, but I wrote a new song at lunch, so I’m going to play that one instead.”

She begins to strike the keys in a way that seems familiar to only her, and her voice is strong and sure. She calls this song “Boxes,” as she sings of her fruitless attempts of getting over a boy. Coupled with the initial shock, Weber’s talent was the talk of the night.

“I really just did it [the talent show] for fun. A lot of my friends here said I should do it and they signed up and were doing it. It was fun, it was a great night,” Weber said.

Weber came to Arkansas from Germany with a foreign exchange program to make new experiences that she wouldn’t have at home.

“I really wanted to meet new people and learn about new language and culture. I just really wanted to get out of home for a while to learn new things, which I have,” Weber said.

Despite the echoing praise for her song from the PrimeTime performance, Weber felt that she wanted to do something different. She believes that each of her songs holds a message, and the song she wrote at lunch better fit what she wanted her message to be.

“I was running around with an idea of that song for a few weeks, and the other song that I actually was going to play was one that I finished a few months ago, but what that song said was not what I wanted to put out in the world anymore,” Weber said.

Weber also chose the new song over the one that she had practiced many times due to the range of the song. She wanted a big moment with her voice, and because the old song was primarily low-toned, she opted for the one that would make the biggest impact. It just so happened that on the very day of her performance in the few hour window between her PrimeTime performance and her night show performance, she was able to create a song that carried the message that she wanted to put out.

“I started writing that song on that day, and I showed it to two good friends of mine during lunch break, and they said ‘hey, you have to do that’ so we recorded me singing and improvising so we had a slight idea of where it would go, and then I just wrote it down,” Weber said.

Weber both sang the song and played the piano to go with it, but while Weber had the song lyrics written down, she almost entirely improvised on the piano.

“I never write my piano music. I have the chords, and then I totally improvise,” Weber said.

Weber has several completed works, all written entirely by her. She pulls her inspiration for the songs from actual experiences and events in her life, and her song “Boxes” was no exception.

“Back home, there is someone that I like a lot, but we’ve had lots of complications, and we ended in a bad way and haven’t talked in a few months. I kind of just wanted to tell him with the song that I’m doing fine,” Weber said.

The song actually fulfilled its purpose as her message got to him in Germany. Because of the song, they were able to talk again.

“Because he heard it, we started talking again. We talked about that [the song], and kind of cleared up the past and it’s going really well,” Weber said.

Although she does not want to pursue a career in music, Weber wants to keep her songwriting, singing, and playing as a hobby that she does often. For Weber, it is a source of therapy, to get her thoughts and feelings out in a beautiful way.

“If you feel like there’s something in your head, just start playing, talk, or shout, and get whatever is in your head out there,” Weber said. “It’s like a pipe, and sometimes you just have to let water run through it to clean it out, and at some point, clear water is coming out again.”