happy new year. here are three songs. two are new.
december 29th was the twelfth anniversary of my first album & the fifth anniversary of my (at the time) latest album.
i’ve been working on an album. it isn’t done. there are a few songs that were going to be on it that i’d reluctantly decided didn’t flow or fit thematically & put back on the shelf to record later. then the double anniversary put my deeply into my feelings. some of these feelings were a deep annoyance at not having released anything this year as i’d planned to, so that day, i grabbed some of those songs off of that shelf & turned them into this EP.
two of them have never been heard before. this feels lightly absurd to say, but it’s really really really nice to be able to share new songs because it means i have new songs to share. in late 2019, i was evaluating my relationship to music with big plans to make it healthier & more productive the next year. in 2020, as most things did, that relationship got weirder & more strained. in 2023, i caught covid for the first time (as far as i know), leaving me with weird chronic headaches that totally wipe me out. after a couple of years of recovery & learning my new limits, they’re not quite as bad, but they’re still rough when they pop up. for whatever reason, working on music is the thing that triggers them most aggressively. i think i’m on a path to figuring out how to make it work, but it basically just… like… sucks.
regardless, i’m figuring it out, & writing a little bit, & now this EP exists.
a little about the songs, in reverse order:
take something
i think of this song as new, but it was actually first posted on youtube seven years ago (closer to eight). what i’m coming to realise is that anything i wrote after 2016, the year i released twelve EPs with a majority of my catalogue that was worth recording up to that point, is probably always going to feel “new”. this is also because i’m just getting old & experiencing the requisite changes in how time passes, but that year & project are a pretty definitive break-off point.
i’m not sure if there was a specific incident that inspired me to start writing it, but looking through my photos in the week before i posted that video, i was nursing a black eye (drinking-related injury) & taking crying selfies with wine on my shirt, so there are some safe assumptions about what sort of things i might be gesturing towards when i say “all the times i’ve made a fucking mess”.
all three of these songs are, in some form, obsessing over my relationships to people. i think this one is also about me being juuust on the edge of being ready to admit i’m not psychic. it took me a while to accept that being able & eager to ascribe negative motivations into anything anyone does doesn’t mean i’m better at Seeing the Truth, it just means i’m great at making stuff up & have a lot to talk about in therapy.
holy shit
here are the approximate numbers of months i’ve lived in places since moving out on my own: 10, 12, 12, 12, 3, 3, 20, 26, 4, 16 (& counting). i didn’t move at all for the first 23-ish years of my life, so it’s been pretty strange. i started writing this song in the process of moving from peterborough (12, 12, 3, 3, 20, 26) to ottawa (4, 16 (& counting)).
i was born in kingston & lived there for more than two decades & it was never my home. i miss some of the people & i miss the waterfront; i’ve never missed the city. i lived in toronto, but it was brief & never became home. peterborough did. when i’m sick or sad & get yearning pathetic “i want to go home” feelings, i’m thinking about peterborough. i can’t live there right now, but i think of it before i think of kingston when i consider where i’m “from”. i miss the people & i miss the place & i also miss a thousand things about it that don’t exist anymore. i miss the feeling that i was finally figuring out how to start figuring out how to figure out be happy.
it’s complicated. home is complicated. it was my home & i moved away from it, in part, because i was frighteningly lonely. it was the right decision & also it didn’t fix it, because it’s kind of just… me. i read a few diaries from when i was a teenager recently & while i wasn’t always this isolated, i do think i’ve always been lonely. finding community in a new city is hard for most people at the best of times, but this is particularly true for me & for the times we live in. i would like to minimise further exacerbation of my post-covid conditions by trying to catch it as infrequently as possible. this is, unfortunately, no longer a public health priority, so i don’t really have access to social spaces in the same way i used to.
i’m trying my best. my best is mostly just fine. all three of these songs are in some form obsessing over my relationship to people.
hello!
it’s very possible that i’m forgetting a more blatant one, but i still feel confident saying this one of the more blatant cries for help i’ve ever recorded. it’s pretty straightforward. allthreeofthesesongsareinsomeform
i wrote this in basically one sitting, which i haven’t done in so, so long, & that felt better than i can possibly describe. as a general rule, i’m incredibly grateful to have learned how to work on things slowly & consistently– thank you methylphendiate– but sometimes it’s still just nice to have something be fucking easy. imagine that?
see you some time next year with a full length heartbreaker.🖤