what I have to say, amongst other things
I put out an EP a few months ago — let's talk about it.
So, I went through a pretty major life shift in early September. I already know you know what I mean, without me even having to name it. Fast forward to January, and the person I am today is the result of lots of self-reflection, brutal realizations, and so many debriefing sessions (and counting). I guess you can say the experience was, what the kids call, a canon event. A stepping stone. And of course, no one ever wants sad things to happen to them, but maybe it was always meant to happen, in order to advance the plot. When I look back on September, I almost wince at how dramatic I was about it all; how “major” of a change I considered it to be, only because I’ve racked up more miles under my belt on the road to healing than I had back then. But, being the girl who only feels in superlatives, it surely felt major at the time.
When it first happened, I told a few close friends the entire story, I tried (emphasis on tried) to play the role of the mysterious and nonchalant girl. I didn’t post anything on the internet that would raise any concern for my well-being, for maybe five days total. Possibly even less. But silence and aloofness could only last me so long, and it just didn’t feel satisfying to pretend like nothing happened, because something did happen. And it’s not like I wanted to shout about it from the rooftops, but if you know me at all, I’ve never been the kind to keep quiet about anything — much less about something that left my heart shattered in the way that it did. Writing songs, posting cryptic (or, at times, not-so-cryptic) Spotify lyrics on my close-friends story that hinted at what happened, and covering said songs for TikTok provided me with some emotional release, but not enough. I kept feeling a tug on my heart and an uncontrollable urge to do something more. Not necessarily something unhinged, but along that vein. I was sitting in the middle of a coffeehouse on campus when it hit me — I need to release music.
So there I sat, in my little booth, silently lamenting what was and what could have been. It felt like listening to sad songs wasn’t enough. I’d cycled through my entire heartbreak playlist (aptly titled, “the giver”) more times than I could count, but none of the songs were hitting like they did the first few hundred times, so I just started scrolling through my voice memos app to listen to my own songs, because who could describe how I was feeling better than my literal own self? The thing is, eerily enough, something very similar (but at much lower stakes) happened to me and this person almost exactly one year prior to this. I’d written songs about it then, because of course I did. So, when I was going through my voice memos, I realized that I could relate to those songs from last year all over again, given the new situation. But it was weird — I wasn’t experiencing my old songs in the same way that I felt when I originally wrote them. It felt as though initially, the goal in mind was writing to express my confusion, as if each song was written as an unsure and incomplete thought, with a question mark at the end. When I revisit them in my current state, it’s like each song has a definite ending: I know it’s over now, and it’s okay. I might not be okay, but I am holding onto a sliver of hope that I will be, eventually.
That’s how I decided to put out my EP, what I have to say. The first five songs were written last year, and the final song, love me more, was written one month before the project was released. I left them all as live voice memos, each recorded after finishing writing each individual song, because I felt as though that way, each song’s momentary vulnerability shone through the best. The lyrics in these songs are also what matter the most to me, and I think leaving the song live and stripped brings more attention to them that way.
what I have to say: Q&A
A few days after the EP came out, I posted a question sticker on my Instagram story for you guys to send me any questions you had about the project, so here are those answers now!
Q: In a song themed around an interstate, why “on the shore / are you getting bored”?
A: For context, I am an insanely cautious and nervous driver. I didn’t get my license until I was 20 because of how scared I was to start driving. I’m pretty good at it, but if it’s an unfamiliar route that requires the freeway, I’m tense the entire time. I had to start commuting to school when I started my master’s program last fall, which meant taking the interstate route on the freeway. Now, I’m pretty much completely comfortable with the route, because I’ve done it so many times, but I was anxious out of my mind that entire semester every time I got behind the wheel, and I didn’t know if that was how I was going to end up going, if you catch my drift. Around that same time, I was actively experiencing what I like to call Part One of what the whole EP is about. So, I combined my fear of impending doom in general with my fear of the impending doom of a relationship, and voilá – the song was born. The reason I included the line in the verse and the bridge “On the shore / Are you getting bored” is because I have always felt a connection with water as an element. The sea is something that can be perceived as constant — it’s always going to be there; it’s stable. I’ve always been selective regarding who I choose to spend my time with, and I pride myself in being fiercely loyal once I’ve decided to trust someone. But the thing about the ocean is that its waves are also incredibly unruly and unpredictable, and I see a large part of myself in that aspect as well. I can become moody and mean out of nowhere, and then back to normal, once I’ve gotten over whatever bothered me in that moment. I feel like sometimes the back-and-forth nature of my temperament can become tiring or boring for some people. It feels like I just put the people I love through the ringer time and time again, but I never actually mean to. I think having to deal with that (me) regularly can be tiring, draining, or even boring, so that’s why I compared myself and my disposition to the irony of the stable yet unpredictable nature of the ocean in this song.
Q: Are there any songs that did not make it on the EP?
A: The songs that are on there, I knew I wanted on the project. I was a little hesitant about love me more, because it was so freshly written, but I just felt like I needed a song from this year on the EP, so that it wasn’t all just songs I’d written last year that I can relate to again. But — there are a few songs that were possible candidates for the EP that didn’t end up making it (and if you’ve been following me on social media for a while, you might recognize them): when she wants, goodnight, freeway, and medicine. I wanted the EP to take the listener through a chronological account of the harder moments from the last couple years, and some of those convey a very similar mood as one of the other songs that did end up making it on the project. There are also a couple songs that I almost put on the EP that I’ve never shared snippets of online, called heaven can’t see and elementary, that I may record in the future — who knows!
Q: Which song are you most proud of?
A: I think interstate … but don’t tell the others! It feels like choosing a favorite child. I only say interstate because I think it’s the most metaphorical, lyrically rich song on the project, maybe even that I’ve written in general, at least so far. I’m so proud of the other songs on the EP too, but interstate was one of those songs that needed to be written NOW or else I would maybe go insane. I’d been subconsciously repressing all of these worries about the situation I was in at the time, and I realized it kind of all at once, and I just needed to put those thoughts somewhere that wasn’t my brain, because I couldn’t hold it in anymore.
Q: I’d love to know more about what went into the making of the cover art / aesthetics.
A: Since releasing the EP was a really quick decision I made as a result of a recent experience, I just did what I could with assets I knew I already had up my sleeve. The cover art is actually a picture my sister Eden took of me in the woods during a camping trip last year, and I knew that I wanted to use it for something music-related in the future; I just didn’t know what. Here’s the original photo:
And then I got into making cyanotypes earlier this year, and this was one of the pictures I made a cyanotype of. Here’s how the cyanotype version of the photo looked originally:
Like…that looks good already, right? I thought so too, but this Original Cyanotype Blue color was the color scheme I used for the Miles I Can’t Afford cover art that I made (which is a lovely song with my lovely friends Regina Pimentel and Wesley Preis that you should totally check out if you haven’t yet xoxo). So, I decided to digitally edit the color to a soft sage-y green (my favorite color besides lavender purple) and add the title in my handwriting:
And that is the finished product :-) Not a lot of thought went into using green and woodsy imagery for the EP’s general look, I honestly just really liked how it looked and wanted to implement this color into my discography somehow!
Q: Are you okay?
A: Well, I released an entire EP about it, so I’ll let that speak for itself. <3
(Jokes aside, yes. I’ve been keeping good company.)
Q: What producing mic did you use?
A: The entire EP was recorded on the voice memos app! I also didn’t do them all in one go — they’re recordings that I quite literally plucked right out of the past. Each track is the original voice memo that I recorded on my phone directly after writing each song.
Q: What’s the story of you should know by now? I have my own interpretation of it, but I just want to know!
A: you should know by now is about parting ways with someone romantically before anything real begins. It’s about agreeing that just being friends is what’s best, because that’s what they are to you, first and foremost. And even though it’s been talked about and looked at from every angle possible, you just still don’t feel like it’s over — and you know, deep down, neither do they. But at the end of the day, you’re just glad they still play a role in your life, even if it’s not the way you want them to be.
Here’s the prologue I wrote for the EP (which I’ve already posted on Instagram & YouTube as a voiceover alongside a little montage I put together of videos from the past two years, but I think it deserves a place here, too):
what I have to say is a collection of six songs that take you through the more difficult parts of the past almost two years of my life. I feel like a liar, for even daring to call those moments ‘difficult’ or ‘hard’, because on one hand, I had the most fun I’ve ever had in my life, and I learned how to love – and what it means to fall into it, to give it, and to receive it. On the other hand – the way it always seems to – life, amongst other things, got in the way. And there were times when I didn’t realize just how much of myself I was willfully giving up or giving away. I would risk it for a multitude of reasons, but the main reason was simply because I was selfish. In her essay anthology, Pop Song (one of my favorite books I’ve ever read), Larissa Pham writes: “In my most deranged moments, I believe I would erase my whole future for a future with you. Of course – it seems so easy to exchange one unknown for another… That’s what paints me as a discrete and vulnerable subject, and opens me to disappointment – and that which is worse than disappointment, the kind of hurt I can’t anticipate” (in her essay, “Crush”). These lines perfectly describe the motivation behind wanting so badly for something to work out. It’s illogical, really, but I suppose I thought that if there’s no way I can choose how it ends, I want to at least hold the liberty of choosing how it begins. I felt like if I didn’t chase after it myself, never seized the opportunity while it was placed in front of me, I would never get to experience it. But in those moments, I didn’t realize fully that that’s what I was doing. And like certain attributes and aspects of ourselves that make us who we are, they are seemingly unchangeable, unless some sort of divine intervention or miracle takes place.
Sometimes we fall so hard, and give so much of ourselves – our time; our effort – and we don’t realize how much we’ve given away and haven’t gotten returned to us until it’s too late. And once that realization is made, you can’t help but just feel sad about it all. It's a silly, sort of paradoxical feeling – knowing that you don’t regret a single moment, because it all happened for a reason, but also knowing that if you were the author of this story, a few edits should probably be made.
You can tell yourself over and over that you don’t need another lesson, that you’re ready for the real thing, but I’ve learned that we don’t get to decide that. And just like how you can’t beg the moon to stop orbiting the earth, and how you can’t simply ask the earth to cease from orbiting the sun – you can’t just want something enough in order for it to happen. That is their nature; their purpose.
The past nearly two years have been such a special time for me, and a fraction of my life that I will always hold closely and reflect on with fondness and love, but also with somewhat of a heavy heart because no one likes an open ending. There are still so many things that I feel were left unsaid, but maybe that’s just because I never feel like I’m done talking. Because I’m not. I’m afraid I might never be.
I hope that these songs take you by the hand and navigate you through my narrative of those harder moments, and in a more vulnerable and genuine way, too, being in the form of voice memos. I feel like these songs have more effect as raw recordings than fully fleshed out and produced. These are songs that were meant to be heard like this, I think.
On that note, here’s what I have to say.