Entry number 5, 24/11/2024
I was supposed to release an album this month, on my birthday, November 14th.
I’d come up with the idea of releasing an album on my 36th birthday, maybe two years ago, around the same time I started to think a lot about death.
I was 34 and felt like 35 was this huge milestone. I don’t even know exactly what made me think that way. It was more like a way that I was feeling. Like, 35 was this really important year. In the back of my head, I definitely had RuPaul’s voice, because I used to listen to What’s the Tea, which was this podcast that he did with Michelle Visage, and they were talking about ageing. Saturn Cycles came up, which is an astrological thing idea that every 7 years, you are redefining who you are as a person. At 7, at 14, at 21, we’re going through huge changes, physically, mentally, socially, and it continues throughout your life. And so, as soon as I started to feel overwhelmed by the idea of turning 35, and by overwhelmed, I mean waking up one day and not being able to stop thinking about death, I remembered Saturn cycles and decided that made sense.
And I leaned into it. I leaned into it hard. I’d only recently started writing songs for my solo project, Valenstein, but I decided I wanted to write an album, something that would capture the restless, desperate feeling I had of time running out. And I got it in my head that this album had to come out on my 35th birthday. It absolutely had to. But I didn’t even have anything written down, just vague song ideas floating around in my head. And as time moved on through spring and summer, I knew there was just no way I was going to be able to pull together an entire album in the time I’d given myself to do it. So I pulled back, settled instead for releasing a single that I’d been working on, some poetry set to an atmospheric sonic backdrop. In the end, I felt okay about it, because I realised I couldn’t write about something I hadn’t experienced yet. I thought, you know, turning 35, being 35, that’s two different things. And to be fair, they really have been.
At 34, I felt so lost. I’d finished my second master’s degree in musicology and thought I would be starting a PhD a few months later. But I didn’t get the scholarship I’d applied for, and I had to delay the PhD by a year. I felt like the life I had planned for the next few years had just been taken away from me, and I was so angry and confused about what to do. So I threw myself into a HND in music, which was a bit of a mental choice, but the opportunity had come up through some work I was doing with a college, and I was really struggling. I didn’t feel like I could go into working again, and going back to college just seemed like a safe option, something to do until I figured myself out. It was a lot of fun, but it was also very disorientating. I’d gone from university to college-level education in the space of a week, and it was really, really difficult to adjust. I actually handed in my Masters dissertation the day before I started the HND. Everyone I met was so young and had what seemed like these incredible futures ahead of them, and I just felt even more like I was never going to make anything of myself.
I did reapply for the scholarship, and thankfully this time I got it. So in my last month of being 34, I started a PhD. While I was waiting to hear back about the scholarship, I had been thinking of not taking it if I was offered it, and not doing the PhD then, or maybe at all. I thought that maybe I’d be better off doing another year of the HND. Maybe I wasn’t ready to do something so big. But when I got the email telling me I’d been awarded the scholarship, I had one of those true moments of pure clarity that I’d only ever heard about on Star Trek, and I just knew that it was the right thing to do. I was so, so happy. I cried, and I was so, so excited to get started. So 34 ended well, and 35 started off pretty good, but it didn’t really keep going that way. This last year has been something else.
Last December my sister had a stroke, and that pretty much coloured the next few months for my family. Thankfully she’s recovering really well, but obviously this is a huge event that will affect her for the rest of her life, and we’ve all been feeling the adjacent stress. The worry about her that never really goes away, the late night wonderings about my own health; what do I need to get checked for, will it happen to me? I feel like I’ve been quite lucky with my physical health compared to my sister, but that makes me nervous. Will I hit 40 and suddenly all the bad genes will just turn on, or maybe the menopause will trigger all these hidden conditions I didn’t even know I had? This underlying health stress has been compounded by money worries, imposter syndrome, PhD life! My restless little heart, and the state of the world. I feel so keenly the creeping shadow of death, and it compels me to push myself like there is no fucking tomorrow, because there might not be.
It was this fear that made me return to this goal of releasing an album, which of course needed to come out on my 35th birthday, or it wouldn’t be special, it wouldn’t mean anything. I had months this time, surely I could make it happen. But that fear of running out of time, that restless determination, actually led me to so many negative places. Frustration with my lack of musical ability, anger at how long I had taken to start making music in the first place, and of course, comparison. When I should have been writing songs, I was looking around at my scene and feeling like everyone I knew was releasing incredible music, and I hadn’t put anything out in a year. I felt like I was falling behind, again. And that brought up this constant underlying feeling I have that the finish line is always just out of reach, and I can make it if I compromise, but even then, I’ll be second. Only ever second.
Of course, I ran out of time again. At the start of October, I was very much in denial, and even released a single called Spring, which I said was off my upcoming album. But days later, as I listened to my half-finished demos, I started to understand that there was no way I would be able to finish this album. Not just logistically, I would have had to have had everything mixed, mastered, and sent to the CD duplication company weeks before, but artistically, too. This album, A Pure Guid Mixtape, was supposed to detail my teenage years, specifically from the ages of 14 to 17. It was meant to be a love letter to my two best friends, a coming-of-age story, a record of our past and a homage to our hometown that we hated so much. I wanted it to be a deeply detailed experience, a sonically stunning testament to how girls can survive when they have each other. And so, the more I thought about how much this album meant to me, and how much I hoped it would mean to others, the more I realised it would take so much more time to do it justice, to create something that was truly representative of the vision I had.
And that’s why I cancelled my album launch. Because it’s not ready. And neither am I.
When it comes to my music, my art, I find it really difficult to step away and wait. And when I say wait, I actually mean work. Get better. I want to get to a place where I can create something that is going to change my life, stupid as that might sound. I don’t want to be some obscure songwriter no one has ever heard of because I’m too scared to share my work, my life. But I also want the things I do share to be the best representation of my ideas. I love having this podcast and blog to show my process and the things I’m working on. It definitely soothes that urge to put out anything and everything. And I hope that when I am ready to share the really good stuff, you’ll want to listen to it.
I plan to spend the next few months just learning. Production, composition, vocals, songwriting. Just see how that works out. I’d like to think I could put out another single before the end of the year. Something to show I’m still here. But maybe the rest is good. Because making music is bloody difficult. I want to go so hard and so fast with it all the time. Write, record, produce, mix, master, bang it up on the internet. But it takes time. So, so much time. So I’m slowly learning to be patient. To push aside comparison when it rises and let myself fail. Because music is not something that I can or should spend five minutes on then release, unfinished. A disappointingly inaccurate representation of my intentions and abilities. But rather something that is done when it’s done. A mirror to my inner world. A sonic space for others to rest and be carried.
So while I won’t be releasing an album anytime soon, I am working away, slowly and carefully, on my art.
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When I was trying desperately to finish this album, I began taking a lot of my song ideas and making poetry out of them instead. Some of them turned out great, but I know I’d really rather that they were songs. So, since they won’t be getting released in poetic form, I thought I would share a few of them here.
Running out of credit
Waiting in the rain for hours
Never letting go of my belly
Never letting go
Never letting go
Never letting go of my belly
Twisted fingers making marks on soft skin
Writing letters under desks
Waiting in the rain for hours
Never letting go of my belly
Putting myself in danger
Ignoring my mother
Loosing the small self I had to an obsession I didn’t start
Waiting in the rain for hours
Never letting go of my belly
Using my last text, to send you a message meant for someone else even though I know you won’t get back even though I know you won’t come back even though I know you never text back
Waiting in the rain for hours
Never letting go of my belly
River of Dreams
You’ll pick me up tonight
I’ll be late, always making you wait.
Blasting Billy Joel out the windows of your car
We’ll drive around the back roads
No destination
Just, killing time
Driving in your car
Singing old songs to cover up new scars
I never learned to drive
Couldn’t return the favour
I dropped out moved away lost touch
Disappeared
You got braver.
I wish i’d never gone.
Did I make you wait too long?
Pick me up tomorrow?
I swear I won’t be late
Blasting Billy Joel out the windows of your car
Drive me round the back roads
No destination
Just making up for lost time
Driving in your car
Singing new songs about old scars
I never learned to drive