I'm a Floor Person

I wrote a song last week.

It’s technically not the first one I’ve written since becoming someone’s mom, but it felt like it was. After 15 months, I finally got to sit on my bedroom floor and just… write. The way I used to, before my relationship to the floor was centered around constantly cleaning up discarded toddler breakfast/lunch/dinner.

Whenever anyone asks about my “process,” the floor is usually mentioned. I mean, I’m almost 40, and I still blow dry my hair on the floor. I put my makeup on on the floor. I guess there is just something about the literal foundation of a room that feels safer to me than a legit seat. My back doesn’t love being hunched over with zero lumbar support, but the mood of floor sitting while creating just hits in a way a couch or a chair never could. The floor is the literal bottom, which I guess is a great place to start, especially when you’re trying to remember how to be a creative person.

There is a specific level of dread in the air lately. The kind where “skinny is in” again and it’s a crisp 94 degrees in Los Angeles in mid-March. I’m trying to figure out what to say and how to say it in a time where rhyming “lazy” with “crazy” feels downright irresponsible (I save that for the goofy little songs I make up for my daughter). I have a tendency to get a bit cart-before-the-horse-y when it comes to songs now. I guess at some point, I stopped writing for the sake of writing, and everything had to “be for something.” I blame my Covid-era existential crisis, where I was finally forced to reckon with the 'what I do is not who I am' of being a professional musician. Spoiler alert: that reckoning is still happening lol.

Crazy For You was written so organically from my bedroom floor before I even knew it would become an album. When I was young, I just wrote. I didn't think about where a song would end up; I just needed a place to throw up all the swirling anxieties in my head. Now, I’m a pushing 40-year-old mom to a daughter in a world that is actively falling apart, and I’m figuring out how to turn that dread into something structural.

Which brings me back to the floor.

On the floor, I don’t have to be a “professional musician” writing songs for a “thing.” I can just be that old version of myself that doesn’t overthink the results of whatever she is making. For the last 15 months, I’ve been under the impression that that version of myself was paved over by adulthood and that becoming a mother meant I needed to trade in my “floor self” for a “chair self,” someone who is more upright, more composed, and seemingly cares about her posture. But being back on the floor the other day reconnected me with the part of myself that wrote songs for the sake of writing them: without expectation, without overthinking things, and without a chair.

It reminded me that my anxiety isn’t something I have to outgrow or “fix” to be a “good” adult, a “good” mom, or a “good” songwriter. It’s just the material I have to work with; the same material I have always had to work with. Writing that song felt like saying the thing that’s actually happening, and that is the thing I’ve always loved most about writing songs—taking a feeling and turning it into something.

The floor might be cluttered, and yes, my back hurts, but for the first time in 15 months, I recognized the person in the mirror (the one propped up against the wall on the floor) again. What will happen with this song? Who the fuck knows. All I know is it felt really good to be back on the floor.

In other non-floor-related news, my dear friend and frequent collaborator, Morgan Nagler, released her debut solo album I’ve Got Nothing to Lose, and I’m losing It last week, and it is 10/10 fucking fantastic. I got to sing harmonies and background vocals on a bunch of the songs on the album, my favorite of which is called “Orange Wine.” Morgan is my favorite kind of songwriter. She manages to find these outrageous, perfect lines that feel less like they were written and more like they were just pulled out of thin air.

I often refer to her as my songwriting doula, as she is one of my favorite people in the world to write a song with because she makes me feel safe to be sloppy and safe to be myself. She invited me to sing “Orange Wine” with her at her record release show in LA, which was my first time on stage since having a baby! Insane! Also insane, I brought said baby to soundcheck, and she got kicked out of the venue for being under 21. Already a punk. Here’s a little video of “Orange Wine,” and go check out Morgan’s album now.

Until next time xo.