the thrill of loneliness
10/7/24: witnesses to our pain
I played Hana my solo album and I cried, ha. Why? There was something about her being a witness to it. I read recently, “trauma is the absence of an empathetic witness”.
There was a point last year where I face-timed Hana to interview her about her album, and it was this absolute piercing through the veil. I was in a beautiful flat that wasn’t mine, next to the sea. And I was in a total mental health crisis. I spoke to Hana, halfway around the world, a friend I hadn’t seen in years, and I felt so seen and heard and understood. So there was something really fucking beautiful about her coming to the studio on Monday to play on mine.
I don’t really know what my album is as an album, but I know it’s taken ten years to muster the courage to do one by myself. Which feels stupid, but if you look at any artist’s trajectory, sometimes people start in their forties, you know?
This album saw the tail-end of a nine-year long relationship breakup that threatened its ability to even be made. It is total heartbreak, and you can hear it. It was made during a time where part of my family became embroiled in a war, when most of my friends, and myself, were suddenly in situations of near-homelessness in London. I actually was homeless, and it felt like very few people understood or even cared. It showed me how we really are just animals walking about somehow believing we’re important, and anything can happen to any of us. My band of nearly ten years had been under sustained, constant financial threat…we were all so tired and miserable…Covid! Oh my god, Covid. Ten years of Tory austerity. Need I go on?
I felt absolutely mental. It was written in a time of extreme mental illness, for me. With OCD, I’ve barely been able to leave the house. Suddenly, I didn’t have one to leave. I was thrown into nature, back into myself. There was no time to be numb. It was amazing, actually. I had to confront everything.
OCD, anxiety and depression has swallowed so much of my life. So many missed opportunities, but then so much beauty, too. I’m not sure I would change anything, looking back. Sometimes these traumas and severe mental health issues are just a piercing of the veil, a way to see into eternity. There is something about owning nothing and knowing life is ephemeral that makes you so grateful just to be here.
If this album sounds bleak, that’s because everything was. And I’ve had to let it be bleak, let it be a snapshot in time. The ending of it, though…the second half is fucking beautiful. At the end of last year, I fell in love with myself and life again. Everything shimmered. Oh, it was so beautiful. A feeling I will remember forever.
This album is the most honest I ever could have been. And that was my only goal.
It was made in my best friend’s living room, in the Crypt. It was made during one of the hardest, most painful times of my life, but also, the first time in my life I’ve felt truly loved and held by the people around me (maybe because it’s the first time in my life I started to truly love and hold myself). It’s been made with absolute love. No radio hits. Nooooo ‘hits’. Not even close.
Hana wrote a song…nine? eight? years ago. ‘The Thrill Of Loneliness’. Her lyric, ‘I have never felt free’, has always stayed with me. So when she played this chord the first time I say ‘free’ on my album…it was a magical moment.
Who cares what happens to this album? I did it. I made it.
Please make things. Please believe in yourself. Please fill this hard world with art.