Impulse and Release

I’m a planner.

My friends can attest to this. They text me months in advanced to secure a spot on my calendar. I check traffic for optimal travel times, and I watch the weather to make sure I bring the right jacket and wear the correct kind of pants (holes, no holes, distressed, or flared). My daily life operates on hourly increments, penned in a planner with at least three different colors (red, blue, and green…if you’re curious).

Except last week, I decided that I needed to release a song on my birthday. As I sat down at the computer, hastily putting together the single’s artwork, my anxiety spiked. A zillion intrusive thoughts hit me at once. None louder than nagging: you’re doing this all wrong. You promised you would do things with intention this time around.

I’ve observed my musician friends create videos, graphics, down to the color scheme of their social media accounts to ensure that their art has a proper release. When you think about it, there’s a ceremony to putting your hard work in the world in the same way you celebrate a union or a life. But there are also those who prefer to get married on a whim in the white dress that’s been sitting in their closet. I chose to dust off the pleats in the skirt and clutch a metaphorical bouquet made from the roses from my neighbor’s garden.

Because is there really a right moment? Aristotle would probably scream kairos at me, a reminder that timing does influence the success of a piece of rhetoric. My brain would also say that my life is hinged upon the optimization of the details.

Intuition offered a different perspective.

“Confetti” is a song born out of a therapy exercise. Over the years I’d collected letters from special persons in my life and had a great deal of grief thinking about the words getting scorched in a fire. That if I somehow lost their words, I would lose those moments and those persons forever.

Realistically, I don’t have room to save every word. Realistically, some of those persons don’t care for me anymore, so the letters in the box are wasted space. More dust collecting. My therapist suggested I put the value of my current need (space! fresh air!) over the fear that, yes, once these letters are gone, so is that person. Realistically, no. Perhaps in other ways, yes.

I sat with my therapist watching me sort the letters, painfully justifying why one duplicate of a card meant more than the other. Why any of them mattered to begin with. It took the entire hour, and by then, I had not even gotten to the hardest part. My one piece of homework was to shred all of the letters in the discard pile.

Once the call ended, with shaking hands, I fed them into the mouth of the machine. One by one, little bits of confetti filled the bin. Some pieces of paper spilled out into the carpet. Words here and there, clinging, holding onto me. Of course, I had regret and thought about piecing my past together with glue and tape. More discomfort. There was no turning back. One step forward.

It took a great amount of restraint to resist vacuuming them up. I needed to let go for more than physical space. Emotional space was another. I needed to do this to open up my heart to people who could presently fill me. The words of the past were empty, anyway.

The last bit of confetti is the song, my gut told me. You hold onto hope that every year, something will change, a message will be delivered. It never comes. Your mailbox and inbox will never see that name again.

I put the remainder of the letters I salvaged from the initial pile into a small box I bought a year ago like a coffin. At the bottom of the old velvet lined one, a single postcard I’d forgotten about. An image of a place the sender said they would be delighted to show me, a part of their universe I always wanted to visit with them, but ultimately, never got to see. An empty promise. Surrounding the the picture of the eastern boardwalk, confetti from another letter they’d sent for my birthday years ago.

An old tradition. A sign. It’s time to give the world a gift.

Using the image of the postcard, I created the graphic. I entered the information into the song’s distribution site, and sent one last panicked text message to a friend.

Me: I was supposed to hire a photographer. Do a photoshoot. Be intentional.

Her: Sometimes art is impulsive.

It struck me at that moment how music for me is a love, a sacred practice. It is something I am working to fall in love with again, not to commercialize. I am not a product. These feelings are not meant to be consumed but appreciated. The issue with artistic brains is they can sometimes be tainted and influenced by consumerism, that we so often forget that at any moment, a song can go out into the world. We need to give ourselves permission to give into the impulsive intuition.

Sometimes, a song deserves to be released because you need it to do more for you than for it to earn shares and streams.

“Confetti” is a ceremony of its own. Released on my birthday, shedding the heartbreak of younger years, and coming into my wisdom. I have a new perspective on relationships —platonic, familial, and romantic—with my wish for the coming year to invite new people in. Open heart, open box waiting to be filled with offerings and abundance.

Which, if you would like to receive a postcard, please input your address here. I’d be happy to KIT.

xo,

Ashley Jean

Listen to “Confetti” by Miss Ashley Jean on all available streaming platforms.