Say What You Will, it’s been a heck of a year!
In late August I packed my car, left my home in Seattle, Washington and a fully lived life in the Pacific Northwest.
I drove down the 101 to San Fransico through the Trees of Mystery and gave my respects to the Pacific Ocean. In San Fransisco I dropped my kid off for her first year of College, then reluctantly headed east for seven days with my co-pilot terrier mix Rasputin, a rooftop car tent, my guitar and a headful of memories; destination - Lexington, Kentucky.
When I wasn’t listening to the audio book version of Dune, I had my Spotify playlists to keep me company on the 30+ hour drive. On one of my playlists there was a song by an artist I wasn’t familiar with— but one of his songs had popped up as a suggestion and it immediately struck a chord with me. I put James Blake’s song Say What You Will from his acclaimed album Friends that Break your Heart, on a playlist, that I titled, I’m So Tired. I listened to it over and over again, singing at full blast, trying and failing over-and-over to sing the notes for the duration of his breath without loosing my own.
I’ve never done a solo roadtrip like this one by myself, but it was something I knew I needed to do. I needed to make space in my soul for a big shift, while at the same time seeing the literal space that would exist between myself and my only kid, the life I’d been living and the culture and community that I knew and loved. I almost flaked on myself and looked into how expensive it would be to ship my car cross-country and fly instead…but in the end, I knew I needed to find the courage to make this trip alone.
Through the miles, Blakes song kept digging into my soul with his beautiful refrains and self reflective lyrics over and over again. Every time it showed up in the queue, my heart felt the pull of emotional expression.
“’I’ve been normal, I’ve been ostracized, I watched through windows, as my young self died.””
I have worked on a few cover songs that I have wanted to try, but none of them ever to a finalized arrangement. However, this song was like a spirit box, whispering me back all the things I was already feeling.
Perhaps it was the ‘too many’ huge life changes and transitions happening all at once, the switching of identities (not only as a mother, but as an artist/musician and as a woman), the work of moving through the aging process and the isolation of a pandemic. Perhaps it was the determination to rip myself out of the grip of a depressive state that grabbed me the moment I arrived at my new home. Whatever it was that got me into my studio, it was the act of recording this song that inspired my emergence out of the darkness of an utterly debilitating existential crisis and culture shock . Recording this song was my retreat to self and therapy for my soul. In the music I could find comfort in Blakes lyrics while finding my own way and my own meaningful intention through melody and sound.
There are so many songs that I have been drunk on in my life, but there is something about the kismet of time and place that makes a song become a part of your dna. I truly connected to what I believe Blake was intending in this song— and I hope that he would feel I did his song justice. The willingness to be self-reflective, vulnerable and honest in contemplating our human experiences can be painful at times. I find that sharing these experiences through art, music and conversation truly helps alleviate the uncomfortableness of existence in world that I can often feel at odds with.