On Songwriting

There’s something about songwriting that feels like a release. A journal that you can hear. It makes me feel like all of the traumas, all of the everything that I’ve been through is worth it.

I go through spells where I can’t even get my pencil to move fast enough, those lightning strike ideas mean the world to me. But then there’s the rest of the time. When I’m too busy to sit down with an instrument, and so I function off of small snippets in my notes app or scribbled in the margin of my notes in class, to be forgotten about. I feel like my mental health is a determinant of my writing. If I’m busy, I’m not thinking as much and I don’t have the same wallowing that I do when I have time. This is a blessing for my relationships, for my own health and wellbeing, but I feel like my writing suffers. The tortured creative trope is very real to me, and I wish I could say it wasn’t true, but it is. Even when everything is going well, the only songs that come out of me are gutwrenching explorations of old wounds. I can’t help but pick at emotional scabs when I’m in a dry spell. It opens me up creatively but kills my mental health.

I know that this is not sustainable, but I haven’t found another way. I take my meds, and they dull the edges of my writing. Not a bad thing in the long run, especially when trying to commercialize. Too sad and nobody can stomach it—not sad enough and it doesn’t fit this manic pixie dream girl situation I have going on. I’m unsure whether this is just my early twenties on full display, and maybe when my prefrontal cortex develops I’ll figure it out, or if this is the side-effect of being a creative. Either way, I am driven to writing sad music because it feels universally cathartic.

I’m not one of those people who doesn’t listen to their own music. Call me a narcissist but I think it feels good to hear all of my emotions channeled into something. I could never liken myself to my idols, but I do feel that our creative processes are the same. When we are sad, we write. When we are happy, we write sad songs until we’re sad again. These are my thoughts on my creative process and I hope to come back with an update saying, “Hey! I figured it out! I CAN write something that doesn’t feel like I got punches in the stomach,” but until then this is what wisdom I have to impart.

“Mountain Magic”

I cannot say enough about the house on the farm. This is the cottage core dreamhouse, but unlike the aesthetic that has come about in an attempt to escape from the late-stage-capitalist-hellscape we live in, this place was made to house the people stewarding their land. The cutesy element that comes with the target-branded decorations has been replaced by practicality. I loved being in that house. It felt real, lived in. The years of cookbooks collected and bookmarked with adaptations to recipes to accommodate the produce grown in the mountains— “Instead of using zucchini, I like to use summer squash”  or “Substitute Chickweed and Dandelion Greens for Parsley and Arugula when not available.” I learned so much from that kitchen, those cookbooks, this farm. Not just about agriculture, but about my own place amongst the crops. 

Somehow, I managed to tie my identity to the produce in my hands. What do I know about myself, I remember thinking as I weeded some transplants on a hazy July morning amidst the wildfire smoke that wafted into the Appalachians from Canada.

 I know that I love being a part of feeding my community. 

I’m a provider.

I know that I love being able to do a lot of things for a lot of different purposes. 

I’m versatile. 

I know that sometimes, I defy categorization.

I’m queer.

I’m a provider, I’m versatile, I’m queer. 

What have we grown here that I can feel akin to? Not the peas. Maybe that’s because we had to pick them in the rain for six days straight, but I also just didn’t feel like we had enough in common. 

Fabaceae

I don’t think I feel like any sort of melon or squash, I don’t have a spiky exterior, in fact, I think I’m a bit soft when it comes to letting people get to me, so squash is out. 

Cucurbitaceae

It would be cliche to call myself an onion, and I like to think I don’t make people cry all that often.

  Allium

And even though I have a sunflower tattooed on my body, I don’t even think I could call myself a sunflower, or that I ever could to be honest. I think I wished I was a sunflower, and the nineteen year old who got a crude bush daisy etched into her hip wanted to make yellow my color, even when we both know that if I was any kind of flower, it would not be something so bold. 

Helianthus Annus 

So what am I?

I’m a provider, I’m versatile, I’m queer, I’m soft. 

I’ve narrowed it down to a few options by this point. I’ve got to be a brassica or a nightshade. There are so many brassicae to choose from, so many different fonts of the same family, but for some reason, even though I love to cook with them, I knock them out one by one. Not a cabbage, not broccoli or cauliflower, not collards, not kale, not a Kohlrabi, although that feels like it’s almost right. 

Brassica

Onto the nightshades. Peppers? That’s getting closer. 

Capsicum. 

You know, nobody likes to think of peppers are fruits, but they really are a fruit. Nobody perceives this thing to be what it actually is… there’s something there. Moving forward.

I don’t think I’m an eggplant; that feels phallic and I know there’s a lesbian joke in here somewhere but I’ll let you make that for yourself.

Melongena

So I guess that just leaves a few things. I hope to god that I’m not a potato, sure they’re versatile and they definitely could feed a lot of people, but I don’t think I’m that boring.

Tuberosum

So that leaves Lycopersicon esculentum. The Mountain Magic Tomato.

Lycopersicon esculentum provides more fruit than the average tomato plant would in the microclimate of the Appalachian temperate rainforest. The fruit doesn’t crack or suffer from blight, and one plant can produce pounds and pounds of tomatoes before it eventually shrivels up with the frost. 

Provider

Tomatoes happen to be a pretty acquired taste on their own, but they can be molded to fit the needs of what they are serving. Need a salad? Gotchu. How about a sauce? Done. Juice? Strange choice, but sure! Eaten right off the vine, warmed and kissed by the sun? The best way. Even if someone is an avid tomato hater, there are ways that almost nobody is gonna say no to. 

Versatile

Plus, a tomato, the most misunderstood fruit of them all, right? Nobody wants to classify it as a fruit, so it’s a vegetable, to most. Except for the people who really care, in which case, they make the effort to see the tomato as what it is (do you see what I’m getting at here?) 

Queer

Fleshy, easily bruised–but if you can look past a defect, they can be the perfect addition to whatever you’re making, of course that is if you’re willing to do the work to get past the blemishes and imperfections.

Soft

Lycopersicon esculentum. 

Provider, Versatile, Queer, Soft.