Why it's necessary to fail.

...and singing in foreign tongues until songs find their form.

I wrote the following words in January of last year when I hit a treacherous season of depression and anxiety which lasted about three months and had me questioning how I would make it out.

It led me back into my discography for answers. I’ve always felt my songs write themselves from the future, beckoning me forward toward deeper understanding.

I went back specifically to a song called “Save Me.” It was written from a period similar to this one. I picked through the little microorganisms of ideas that would eventually reveal the final song.

Having honoured this process of songwriting since I was about 8 years old, I have learned that my songs have their own timing that I must respect. They unfold perfectly when I do not force them. Sometimes they live for months in another tongue, a completely nonsensical (to the rational mind, at least) style of gibberish, until they partner up with an appropriate word in English. Maybe they were never meant to have English lyrics in the end. Maybe they were never meant to be understood through language at all. Or perhaps just not yet.

Here are some words and sounds from that Dark Night. Turns out there was a lot to be found there.

January 9th, 2023

The light in New Zealand is brighter than anywhere I’ve ever been in the world. It’s not for romantic reasons, there’s a hole in the ozone layer down here and it makes it very easy to get sunburnt. I’m lathering up often. My vitiligo is becoming quite pronounced with the new tan I’m acquiring — my hands look more and more like the bark of trees. I’m not fussed. It’s a reminder of change and expansion spreading all over me and I may as well just accept it.

The change internally though? Not as easy to embrace. I’m hitting walls everywhere I turn and missing the cool breeze of ease and flow. Where did that go?

I’m back in bed with the good ol’ fashioned dread. Sleepless nights in spiteful succession. Inspiration that sifts like flour through my hands. Nothing sticks and I sense it’s time to stop trying to make it do so. The creative process involves so many days of aimlessness. Months, sometimes even years. I forget. I forget how many pages of total abstraction I have to pour through before I write something worthwhile. I forget how many times I have to fail.