Hear You Me

I’ve always felt things deeply, and explored emotions long before they had to be reckoned with. I still do. Sometimes I question what it is that I cared about as a kid, what I was actually trying to write about, because when I look at a lot of songs I wrote between 14-17, there’s a lot of pain and anger.

But occasionally I look back through the archives and open something like this cover of ‘Hear You Me’ by Jimmy Eat World and find this dark, gentle side of emotions. A composure that says, there is pain in this world and it is also beautiful. And we can honour each other’s stories and we can keep whatever this is that we have together alive.

The child me recording this cover at 16 years old was so far removed from the life I live now, which was at such an intersection of helplessness between witnessing domestic violence play out it’s shadowy game, carrying the weight of that to school with noone to talk to, having a desperate & self-destructive & resentful understanding of romance, and feeling so alone when it came to the kind of music and art and creativity.

I didn’t find substantial music connections until about 2019. And when I did, I stumbled unknowingly into circles of grieving souls, transforming their pain into beautiful works of art. I wouldn’t claim to understand it fully at all, but the grief I witnessed held so much familiarity to that isolated, angry child in me — the burning apathetic ache, the directionlessness, the heaving pointless drag of living, the clawing up and out and up and out and up and out again and again and again and again with no reward but an indiscernibly less shit time of it, the endless unsatisfying answers and explanations and reasons that leave you feeling misunderstood and unheard.

As someone who has lost distant classmates and relatives but hasn’t gone through losing a close friend or family member yet in my life, I can’t say grief draws me in for the same reasons as those who have been through darker days than me, but I found myself having a deep respect for art that comes from that place. I‘ve had the privilege to see the most incredible people I‘ve ever met bear their hearts raw on stage and gift to me the brightest, most wonderful pure expressions of love I’ve ever witnessed — and at the end of the night all I can really offer in return is a valley of tears, and to say “I love you, I wish you never had to make this, thank you so much for singing for us, I can feel this love and this pain you have, I’ll never forget you”

Do you have any favourite works that speak about grief?