My birthday was special this year because I was trying to get in touch with my inner child. My daughter turned one, and I looked back on my own childhood and wondered, in what ways was I more free? Had I moved away from my true self in order to be polite? or because I was afraid? or because being honest is too uncomfortable?

I was determined not to be lazy!

A week later, everything shut down, and so did my identity questions. I was not safe. I am still not safe. Maslow’s Hierachy of Needs shows that that a person cannot focus on psychological needs when their basic needs are not being met.

Now that I am getting ready to release another album, I am feeling sentimental about my birthday, and my EP, Waiting for my Clock. March seems forever ago, with each week in 2020 being so long.

I really like the cover photo on the album and I think it matches well with the title song. I took it at Franconia Sculpture Park, in Saint Croix Valley, Minnesota.

I’m looking through a tube at my husband and child, but they are distorted, and also kind of flat looking. I looked at them that day, and I thought about a friend who had died in her late 20’s. I wonder how far I am behind her?  

The lyrics to “Waiting for My Clock” were written in the days after her death, when I was having trouble sleeping:

          Sunlight, younglight
          Steal this sleepless night
          Waiting for my tolling clock
          to release the bright

          Strike three, strike four
          Feet sneak on cold floor
          Like a ghost I float 
          wishing I could soar

          Instrumental 

          I don't want this eternity 
          I want the sun to shine through me 
          Shine Shine Shine Shine Shine Shine Shine Oooo la la la

I tried to make the recording really gloomy with the reverb, string rattles, and overall vibe.

The song “Windy Day” is interesting because it’s actually two dissimilar songs put together. I wrote the ukulele section on the piano about a man who was very gentle. He was kind to me when I needed someone, and he saw and accepted me for myself. But, when I wanted to sing, I had trouble coming up with words for the song.

I took a few days digging for lyrics for a few different songs in my writing files. I thought these lyrics fit in nicely, over the melody: dried up dripping, hanging thoughts/ clinging to the shells and rocks. I was 25, teaching alone in Korea during a dark winter, and isolated. I scrapped the melody to the earlier song, and used the lyrics for the new one.

But, of course, my friend evokes connectedness, not loneliness. So the emotions are dissimilar, and the song, “Windy Day” balances between the two.

And now a few more random memories of my second album:

• The first song on the album “Turn Around (Could Have Said a Lot)” started out as dream of the main melodic line in the verse. Then I started experimenting to learn more about 6/8 time and about my tenor range.  
• “Pale Yellow Gold” came to me as singing the melody in a dream. Instead of singing about light, I was singing to a friend, Marigold.
• “Don’t Come Inside” is about a real person. One of the people I’ve met that I hate the most in the world. She was a total bitch, as you can tell, and not in the good way.