authenticity

The Story Behind the Music: Full Moon’s Rising

Oh this song. This is it. This is the song that started this whole shebang for me. It is the first song I ever released. And it was an absolutely glorious internal fight to do so. This song, simply by being the ‘first’ song, was my learning curve. I had another song that I’d been working on FOR MONTHS. It’s tentatively titled “Release.” So naturally I thought it was fitting that that song was going to be the first song I released. Ha! Me and that song aren’t even on talking terms right now.

And that’s when this beauty of a song came to me. I was messing around on my guitar on, you guessed it, one full moon night when the chorus and beginning of the first verse came to me. I recorded it on my phone so as not to forget (as I do with all my strange and sporadic musical ideas) and that’s where it sat for a good while.

Finally, I finished the song in March and by July I had released my first single, Full Moon’s Rising. That might not seem like a short time, but for me it was. For someone who had been hoarding her music for years, it was a remarkable turnaround.

As far as the lyrics go, I think they are pretty self-explanatory. This song is an ode to the lovely and beautiful full moon. The instrumentation is simple – just me and my guitar. This is what I could handle on my first song and sometimes I think simple is what is needed. It is by no means perfect, but it’s mine and I put it out into the world. It’s not something that I created and let sit on my computer, never letting another person hear it. It’s out there and imperfect and wonderful and I love it.

I had a lot of fun creating this cover art with my watercolors.

The Story Behind the Music: You Found Me

“You Found Me” came to me chorus first, as most of my songs do. And then when I sat down to write the verses, they quickly flowed out of me. The creation of the verses’ melody was a little more tricky, but I got there eventually.

When I wrote these lyrics, I was worried that without explaining them, they would seem nonsensical. But really, so much of music seems that way to me anyways so I gave up that worry. When you really think about it (and look at the history) music is much like poetry (and some would even say IS poetry). And we don’t expect poetry to be blatantly obvious all the time, do we?

Anywho, on to the lyrics!

Have you ever lost yourself? Like lost your true, authentic self? The ‘self’ that is your joy, your love, your wisdom, your feelings, your beliefs, your connections? That’s what this song is about. Well, not really. This song is about FINDING that part of yourself again. Or rather, being found by that part of yourself.

“Once I was gone again/…You found me.” Sometimes my ego and my ‘idea’ of who I am gets so far in the way that I can’t see the real, authentic me. This song is about letting that ego fall away, essentially die, so that I can be reunited with my true, authentic self. Which is always there mind you. That’s where the lyrics “You whispered in my ear/I was always be there” come from. Because my authentic self is always there. It just gets covered up by my ‘idea’ of myself or my worries or doubts or fears and that ‘idea’ or worry or fear has to die or I have to release it, to actually see what’s been there the whole time: me.

And this process of removing the ego to reveal who I truly am is never fun. Never easy. That’s why I say “I’d fallen down so far/the ground was so damn hard.” Because that shit hurts. The pay off is great, of course. And it happens again and again. Hopefully one day, I’ll live from my authentic self all the time, but right now, this is a process that happens over and over again. That’s why I say towards the end of the song “Don’t, don’t you let me go/ Oh baby, never go/ You found me.” Because I know this will happen again. I will lose myself again and it feels so good, so right, to be in my authentic self and I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to forget, even for a second, who I really am. And there is my true self, coming in again “You whispered in my ear/I will always be here” reminding me that I never really ‘lose’ myself. My authentic self, my true self, is always there and I am never without her. And that feels good.

The cover art that I created reflects this motif – my authentic self cradling my dead ego. Both smiling and at peace.

New Music: You Found Me

My next single, You Found Me, has been released! I’ll speak more about the story behind this song in a later post, but for me, this song is about losing and then finding the real me over and over again and how wonderful it feels to be in my authentic self.

The single cover art – created by moi.

It can be found at most music platforms including Spotify, Amazon, YouTube and CD Baby, among others.