There’s something different about saying things out loud don’t you think?
There’s certainly something different about playing a song to the songwriting circle instead of in your head/bedroom/car.
And theres a difference between looking at a drawing on the sitting room floor rather than on a public wall.
I’ve been playing over in my head a conversation I had over a pot of tea with my erstwhile studio buddy Sarah Goudie. At the time it seemed like I knew what I was talking about. But as I replay my words I have doubts… I realise I felt defensive.
“It’s the same!” I insisted
“Nothing’s changed!”
“It’s all about the same themes, the songs too!”
“I’m just looking from a different angle!”
(move along… nothing to see here…)
…and then, in the cold, quiet house at about 1:30am a still, small voice said…
“really?”
Well done Elena.
I sit here now, my Comfort Blanket lies in shreds around me. A hundred miles away I can hear Bo Jones laughing at me. Have I been kidding myself?
Over the last nine months things HAVE changed. The ground has shifted perceptibly beneath my feet. Faced with the mortality of my husband, I face my own. (Edited for clarity, nobody died, he was just very ill and now he’s ok!)I’m 57 this month (happy birthday to me… etc. etc.) and resentfully peri-menopausal. Resentful that I’m so old, and resentful that I’m so old and it’s still not over. The words I write are darkly feminine. They are not pink. They are not flowery. They are not sugar and spice and all things nice. They are belladonna and arsenic and very nasty. They will not be presented to the band. They will burn a hole in my notebook until I find a use for them… or the writing of them is their use… already done.
Back to the drawings then… I get down to the nitty gritty and actually look at them properly. Well… more properly than I’ve looked at them so far. I don’t even look at the left of the paper when I’m drawing on the right, I realise. One of the self-imposed rules? Then I put them away. Then start another.
They are scary. They are the things in my head that I’m refusing to face. Manifest on the page. Shouting at me…
Meanwhile, I’m in the soundproof booth with my headphones on singing lalalalala! (delightfully in tune of course)
Have you seen Stranger Things?
These drawings are my Upside Down.
What the fuck am I supposed to do now?
