leaving the house

it’s 6:30am and i’m posted up on the porch of my friends’ house an hour outside of town, watching the sun come up. there used to be up to 19 horses roaming the field here in front of me but they’ve all gone back to their original homes or sold to new friendly horse people. the field is so still without them but no less beautiful. a rooster is crowing from the farm across the way and the barn cats just went racing by, chasing each other. surprised my dog didn’t go after them but he looks as sleepy as i feel. soon my friends won’t live in this place anymore, and they’ll head up north. i’ll miss it here. maybe not the way my friends will but i’ll miss it. just sitting outside watching the sky change all day, listening to music (new Blood Orange is brilliant), and working from the cozy porch loveseat. being anywhere else right now feels like a different kind of “outside”.

i’m 75% kidding when i say this but i’m ~devastated~ to notice that the more i feel myself out there the less of me i enjoy. it’s no surprise, by now. it’s the eye on the stove. it’s the devil i know! it’s also not so serious, i’m just taking stock in real-time of what feels too much and what only feels scary because it’s new. making music is one thing. presenting it is different.

there’s just an inherent depersonalization that happens when something that came from you becomes public domain. and i learned this young: the nature of the beast of making music for a living. the promo part has never felt easy and it’s not gotten easier the longer i’ve done it. but i’ve said yes to more opportunities to promote my new music than i thought i would. i’m aware i don’t have to say yes to anything. but it can be good… even fun. it can feel relevant to the work… and even generative. maybe i’m promoting “solo” material but it’s not like i did my work in a vacuum. it was still a group project. i get to support my friends through it. it’s its own band, in a way. interesting.

there is a video i saved in my phone where this woman describes an epiphany she’d had about detaching from an identity that was addicted to suffering. in a Jungian way. exactly what i’m interested in right now, especially as it pertains to how much of my ego/identity is connected to a band and profession that has taken up nearly all of my brain-heart-space since I was 13. the algorithm knows. it sent her to me like a Jungian angel.

i’m remembering when After Laughter, the band’s 5th album, came out and the general consensus was “depression bops”. of course i’d yet to be diagnosed but think i appreciated the insight considering how much was going on that i knew no one was actually privy to. a similar thing is happening now. i’ve only read a couple of reviews of EDAABP (which is not an endorsement of reading your own reviews, as you’ll like the job better when you don’t) but one mentioned that a version of me is dying. it sounded dramatic in music review form but i do believe it, which probably makes it true. the thing that makes it funny though is that i must’ve truly believed i had grown beyond these seasons of self-demolition. i fucked up and forgot this is life. all the deconstruction— christianity. family of origin. toxic relationships. ego— and the renovation— new boundaries. improvements. what makes you feel “home”— over and over again and i bet before it ever feels done, we’re gone.

36 was never going to be the end of lessons, riding off into the sunset or living like a tradwife. i should’ve known. and anyway i’ve got a putrid case of arrested development. stalled out at 14, 16, 18. don’t it make a lot of things make sense? it would seem i’m working through all this in the open now. yikes, sorry. my own good news is i see the patterns better, thanks to writing it all down. thanks to seeing what i would not see before. about myself. i can see where i’ve not helped myself. where i’ve thought i wasn’t capable or as valuable outside of certain contexts.

these new songs are sad. what’s new? most of my songs are. most of anyone’s songs are. where else do you put those feelings but a place that they’ll be held? sort of captive. but songs are beautiful enclosures for untamed feelings. it’s rehab, really. and they’ll grow. i’ll be singing one of these songs a year from now and the feeling will have already transformed a little. you know what i mean?

i suppose i will always write about my own life but there’s definitely a sense that this last project was an exorcism or like a death rattle. it feels like all the shit i’ve been ruminating on from adolescence to about age 26 just came up and out, projectile-style. and thank god, cause it does no one good to jump over or run circles round the hole in the floor when you could just fix it. it’s nice when the painful growth is fruitful. it’s when it’s not that you have to wonder what you might’ve missed.

so, there’s a bit more promotional shit to do. i really want to play shows with this record, so… i don’t mind being outside. i’ll be picturing myself here, on this porch looking out at infinite shades of green. or in the creek, with my feet in the cold water. to answer the person at the Rough Trade signing: yes, i’m okay. a lot of things are true at once, like always. but i’m really actually good. that’s the craziest part.

thanks for reading. keeping comments closed for a while until it’s just us again. the rest always get bored after a while, just gotta wait them out.