I usually wake up at around 10am and then go get a coffee and then listen to music for a bit in my room before I get up and ready to leave the house. I head to the harbour restaurant for noon when it opens everyday (and closes at 1:30). After lunch I head to the studio where the other artists are often already working.
I put on my headphones and work on the one of the five songs that are in progress.
I’ll often stay at the studio late (sometimes until 2AM) and one night Dylan and Anne came in too. I talked about Anne in the last post but Dylan is based in Phoenix, Arizona and is an interdisciplinary artist that explores the notion of thin places, mythologies/folktales, and the meeting place of real and imagined.
We were actually waiting to see the Northern lights but it was too cloudy so instead we turned out the lights and I played for them. It’s a strange thing to play songs that are not quite finished and perfect yet but I did. They sat on the couches in the freezer and snow snow fell outside (or am I just romanticizing this? Maybe it was just cloudy!). Either way it was so lovely and because they both understand the creative process it was easy to just repeat sections that were not quite right. The beauty was in the imperfection and that I was able to share something with them (even though it WAS uncomfortable).
We chatted about how it’s those uncomfortable moments that help us grow. The way that you just have to push yourself to do things (even like coming to NES) and it’s in those moments that we find something and it’s a something that you are not even necessarily looking for, or can even define right at the moment or know that you need. I used to tell Zoe (my daughter) when she was scared to do something to look down and say “LEGS! WALK!”. I have had to do that a few times here.
It’s only a few years later where you reflect and say “oh riiiiight. That!”. I’ll wait until then to understand this journey.
After i played one of the songs Anne told me that she found a poem in one of the snow drifts close to the studio. She didn’t want to remove it but she took a picture and then sent it to me and that is the song that I am currently working on.
I feel like it was written by someone who may have had enough of someone (a partner?) and that they crossed a boundary and she (?) had to say something but couldn’t and then told it to the wind to release it. That’s how I read it – like that way that you want to yell and scream sometimes but you don’t but need a place to put it.
Be Patient
Be Silent
Do not speak
You’ve said
Enough Already
Don’t you think
It’s OK to stop
While the world turns
It’s OK to breathe
You’re probably
Wong about
Alot of things
And that’s alright
Now you have peace
The peace is in silence
That’s what I think
So that is where the words for this song came from. The universe (and Anne because she found them). The recording is rough but I want to post the chorus of the song in progress.
