A simple reflection 🍃
Reminder: come see me at 6pm on Sun 11/19/23 at the 5 Spot in East Nashville!
As we round the corner on 2023, the crunchy vibrant yellow leaves complaining under my feet as the kids get dropped off at school every morning, I can’t help but feel a little sentimental about this magical year of life wrapping up into the holiday season.
This year, I finally looked up and asked myself what I wanted instead of trying to do what others wanted of me. This year, I recognized my own self-limiting thoughts and decided to shut them down. This year, I started to treat myself the way I would treat a good friend. It has been a really good year, especially creatively.
I want to paint an accurate picture though. For me, a good creative season is the byproduct of processing emotionally complex life experiences. At every low point where the basic human instinct is to shut down and lessen negative feelings, I have tried to open up and allow them to happen, reminding myself to be grateful that I can still feel so deeply. There’s really no shortage of things to feel deeply about if you’re paying enough attention.
I started this newsletter about 4 months ago when I started working on Blue Hour (the album). I had enough foresight to say, hey, I should document the energy I’m putting into my creative life. I’m proud of how consistently I’m showing up for the promises I’ve made to myself; they are often the easiest ones to break.
When I started the year off, I was measuring creativity in units of songs. The idea of making a cohesive record hadn’t even crossed my mind until my friend introduced me to a friend and that friend was Soren who listened to my rough demos and said, hey I think you have a record here. I’d love to make it with you. Making a whole record is quite different than recording songs one at a time and then saying hey, these sort of fit together, maybe they can be a record.
Looking at these songs as a collection and sharing them in that way feels like a completely different offering. While individual songs can tell a whole story, my songs feel more like snapshots. Piecing together the songs as moments creates the bigger picture. It’s like the record is an entire season and every song is an episode.
Soren and I are prepping 5 songs to share with friends and contacts in hopes of finding a home for the record. I’m looking forward to wrapping up the recording part and focusing on visuals and building a cool live set for these tracks… it would be fun to play them for you!
Natural segue into a reminder that I am playing my third show of the year on 11/19 with The Narrative at The 5 Spot. I set a goal for myself to play live 4x this year, so one more to come…
As always, thanks for being here and for those of you who read to the end and then message me about it, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your time and attention.
