tiny desk & a tiny essay đź‘€
Hello my loves. Just a quick little one-two share today: First, I’m super proud of this live version of my song “couch” that my band & I recorded for NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest. It’s what I call the “mezzo-piano” version (we have versions for every dynamic level lol). Give it a listen:
And second, I know this is out of the ordinary for me, but I wanted to share a piece of writing with you all. We’ve gotten to know each other pretty well over the months and years, and I thought I’d be a little extra vulnerable to ring in Pisces season.
This is a journal entry of mine from February 2023, a meditation on the pagan sabbat of Imbolc. On this holiday we welcome the return of the spring, as premature as it may seem at the beginning of February (Imbolc is an early ancestor of Groundhog Day, if that helps). Amidst the quintessential struggles of an artist’s first year in New York, I journaled on the Imbolc topics of rebirth, healing, and sowing seeds. I’ve never shared a journal entry with anyone before, but when I re-read this one this year I thought it might resonate with fellow artists, thinkers, and strugglers. If you’ll forgive the ceaselessly wistful tone of my private writing style, and keep in mind that it was not written for publication, you might find it bearable.
Spring begins before you can see it. It begins from within.
…There is absurdly loud construction outside that is clashing with this meditation. But if my body can be strengthened against crow pose, if my mind can be strengthened against Tiktok, surely my spirit can be strengthened against the noise and darkness and lifelessness of this apartment.
Anyway – spring begins before you can see it. I have long struggled with the inception, planning, and execution of tasks that others could not see – or that I myself could not see. Is everyone else doing this? Surely they’re also doing nothing. If this is a task no one discusses, then surely it is without consequence. That has been very hard to unlearn. It continutes to be hard. But I am improving.
I’m learning to work alone. I’m learning to explore career options that no one told me about, through work no one sees me do. I guess in the end, very little of anyone’s work is seen. Like when people become “overnight sensations,” they almost always put in years of invisible work, only the very last night of which is visible and therefore able to be remarked upon. Kalen [Allen] is an easy example of this because I saw how hard he was working before he blew up. So I know there’s no use in waiting for a random wind to blow me, too, upwards. We must be our own wind.
I can’t help but be regretful toward how much of my life I lived as though that was the truth of the world. I wanted to be good before I became visible, but you only get good after becoming vulnerable. I wanted to wait until I was “discovered” to make art – make it with the best producers, a label’s budget, real grownups on my shoulders with objective right answers. But those things don’t come to people with no existing material. But it always felt like it did, because as a consumer, all that other material remained unseen.
I feel like I never learned how to work hard. I was always told it was important; I just don’t think I was taught how. I don’t know if everyone went untaught, or just people like me, or just me alone, or even worse – maybe I was taught, but I did not have the capacity to remember. I hate feeling like I wasted a lot of my life, and that the biggest thing in my way all along has been me. And on one hand, that’s simply untrue. (Hello, pandemic.) But also, just because I’m not famous and I’m not not poor doesn’t mean I wasted my life. I’m happy I went to 16 years of public school. Or 17, with kindergarten. I’m happy for my middle class normie background and my family of nerds and my bachelor’s degree and my diverse liberal education. They’ve made me the person I am, and that person is a person I like and am proud of. I am eternally grateful for my friends and I wouldn’t have them if I was on any other path. I’ve traveled and loved and lost and kept and played and learned and I just can’t look myself in the eye and call all of that a waste.
I’m happy to be reading Alan Watts right now. I want to retrain my mind on the present. I’ve almost always lived in the imaginary promise of the future, and now that I’m beginning to approach that future in the present, here I am lamenting the past. What do I do now?
Well, it helps to start acknowledging when I feel good. Feeling good is not just the empty, temporary space between feeling bad. It is real. and thanks to the work I’m doing with my phone addiction, I’m working on getting things to feel readl without needing to anchor them to my phone. Like John Green said that Toni Morrison said in the passage I read this morning – eventually the world’s beauty can simply be enough. On its own. Enough.
Imagine that.
I’m happy to be inspired by the people around me. I’m happy to take less fearful swings at work that used to paralyze me with terror. I’m happy to forgive myself for still being in the learning phase of life. (The whole thing is the learning phase.) I’m happy to be cognisant of what I want and have new literacy for so many loud and voiceless feelings that have burdened me. I’m happy to fight for more for myself while still asserting that what I am right now, for the time being, is enough.
I am planting my roots.
All they will see is the sprout.
But my roots are real, and they are enough for now.
Thanks for reading, my loves. Or for just scrolling to the end. That’s also totally fine. See you in the next one. <3