It’s Not Me, It’s You
This week brings anticipation for the summer. Festival season. I’m very much enjoying playing music with two new chaps from Todmorden. Tom and Dan. Auspicious, really, or chance, as that’s where it all started over here for me. Will Lawrence finding my first record, and well, the rest is history.
The warm weather has been welcome here. My life feels cyclical. I’ve been writing. I want to write more. Life with two littles under five is the best thing and the hardest thing at once. We left our village, but we’re finding a village here. It’s exhausting. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.
I’ve just finished a paragraph on my new single for my press agent. Songwriting. Ah, the great mystery. The not overthinking. The spiritual aspect. The holy. The healing.
If in doubt, turn to the Queen of Song, Joni Mitchell:
“I often begin my songs on a personal level, but I hope they go on to a bigger truth that transcends my experience. I'm not saying, 'Look at me, look at me.' It's the exact opposite. I'm saying, 'Look at you, look at you. Are we not human? Do we not share these things?”
So, yes, I’ve got a new single coming out on June 25. Two songs were, somewhat reluctantly but necessarily, left off the new album….more on the second one later.
I rode a train to London to attend a book talk. Alone. A book written by Jacinda Ardern. Fitting, I suppose, that in the thick of writing this song, it was 2020. Election year. The world had, to put it simply, fallen to pieces. My year had evaporated. We were sheltering in place. Ironically, I was as content as ever. In the North East Valley.
The radio on at all hours, as I’ve always loved to do. Our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, was leading our country with grace, kindness, and authority. I was happy to do as I was told.
When I was 20, I had a job at Coco’s Cantina — a rather clumsy waitress. Slow, calm, and still learning how to look after myself. Still, I learnt so much in that job. My formative training! Mainly from Damaris and Renee Coulter, the owners (also sisters), but also from the other staff and the customers. Jacinda was one of them. She knew us all by name.
Originally, I had begged (and prayed) for a job at the café next door, Mister Morning, which the Coulters also owned. I learnt by watching about respect, kindness. As wait staff, we had the authority to treat our customers as if they were in our home, our whare. I learnt about true hospitality. And how to confidently open a corked wine.
Damaris would often say, How did we all find each other at this time in the world? Some of my dearest friends are from this time in my life.
Back to the song —
I was doing a lot of walking in Chingford Park, in the North East Valley — a park I fondly remember from childhood at Steiner School (we were looking for arrows…). I walked a lot with Joni, our dog at the time, and then, when I became pregnant, in my third trimester, I walked even more, trying to get the baby out, trying to keep as fit as possible.
This song came to me quite quickly.
Was it you who told me that love is action?
I don’t hear it anymore
I’m a good girl when you want me
To let it out, let it by
As so it was…
Moment by
I’ll spend the rest of my days trying to decipher writing, catch songs, chase meaning, and try desperately to unlock parts of my childhood and teenage years that have been completely wiped from memory. I want to remember everything.
After the book talk in London, I was reminded of the need to look up to others as inspiration.
If a woman can see it, she can be it.
I left Central Hall. Proud, encouraged, a tiny bit homesick. The lot.
Be well.
Oh, and I’m touring. And, more specifically, I’m playing Glastonbury at Noon on the Acoustic Stage. Ummmmm…. what!
I recently went to France to play at a festival in Rouen. My first time leaving little GG. I very much enjoyed the whole experience. Navigating travel in Paris, getting back into the zone, it’s no small thing to leave your baby for the first time. Both of us were fine. I mean, I was more than fine…. here’s proof: me dancing in my 3-star hotel in London.
NR x