Here are the private notes for: “Thawed”.
(Artwork by the fantastic Ray Ibbetson)
Ultimately this is a love song, but it’s pretty gut-wrenching. It’s begging to forever to stand still. It’s willing time to slow down. It’s love don’t leave me, please just see me, please. It’s a plea to stop listening to the incessant noise outside of us…
“Thawed, frozen snow, water on the floor.” sums it all up in a single line, a single image – just how quickly things can change. Time is short, another moment gone forever, and another, and another… Don’t waste a second on unnecessary pain, when it’s all so fucking hard anyway. Love is real, treasure it, please don’t die, don’t die, don’t die, don’t leave me all alone. Don’t leave me. Kinda screaming into the dark heart of it all. Animal wailing or as close to as I can manage in falsetto. Ouch, basically.
Here is a live performance of the complete song. No one trapped in a doomscroll loop is going to bother with the full track on socials. It’s bloody lovely to have an opportunity to find people that want to experience my music in more than 15 second snippets, thank you.
(The sound quality and the angle improve after a minute or so, when we switch camera)
This is literally the first time I played this song, before it was Thawed, before there were even written words (I saved it as “time is short – voicenote”). It was like 3am, my ex and I had had yet another horrendous and absurdly prolonged fight, throughout which I had protested my innocence for hours upon hours, upon hours. I was at borderline breaking point, again. I was at that point a hell of a lot.
It has taken and continues to take a toll.
My go to in times of emotional stress is to make music, I think that’s why it’s my imperative. It’s the way I learned to process over-stimulation, confusion and pain. Making some kind of sense out of the mess of conflicting brain zaps. So, that’s what happened. In the moment, I played her a song, this song.
It feels like: BELIEVE ME PLEASE. See you like I see you. Fucking “take my soul” levels of intense. You can hear it, I can still hear it. It’s viciously painful.
This first recording is meandering and messy and raw and real and, I think, pretty powerful. It’s kinda voyeuristic opening it up, it definitely wasn’t intended to be seen by anyone else. Listening to it now, it hurts in a very different way to when it originally fell out of me. A whole new ache, you know? The relationship smashed itself to bits in the end, inevitably, when I thought this song was about my forever…
Massive head-fuck, honestly. I’m sure you have had that experience yourself – the meaning of a song changing with time, It’s a strange sensation when it’s one of your own, and when you were just SO CERTAIN. It really challenges that idea of the coherent “self” over time, because it’s like listening back to a different person entirely. It sounds like grief now, my ode to what could have been. Time is short.
Original Lyrics
These were written a day or two after the voice-note. You can see I have already changed a few parts and quickly found the final structure. It was pretty much all there anyway, I just needed to cut out any meanderings and repetition, while keeping as much of the raw emotion intact as possible.
Final Release Lyrics
Thawed
Everybody else was a footnote
You were the intro, you were the beginning
Never end.
Keep telling stories that keep changing
Our campfire, bright embers
And time is short, and life is cold, but you melt me
Thawed, frozen snow, water on the floor
Time is short
You are calm, my serenity
You are wild, my ecstasy
Wrapped around my heart like your legs around my waist
Mouths pressed together hard, ‘til I can’t breathe
And time is short, and life is heavy
You’re my helium
High pitched squeals, 3am singing bowls
These are moments
These our moments
And time is short, and life is cold
But you melt me, but you melt me, but you melt me, life is heavy
And time is short, and life is cold, but you melt me
Thawed, frozen snow, water on the floor
Time is short
This was supposed to be the final song of an album dedicated to the relationship. My first coherent work. Ours. But ’twas not to be. I feel like it still sums up the reality of the finished piece, which I will share in its entirety early next year (a full year later than initially planned) but it sums it up, as I said, in a completely different way now. Time is short, don’t regret, life is what it is, treasure the best, take the lessons, forget the rest…
This was going to be the artwork for the album, our album. It’s a combination of moments we shared. It hurts to look at but it’s still pretty beautiful as a symbol of those fleeting, perfect, beyond fantasy moments. Love, love, love, is so very real, so very weird, so very animal and misunderstood. It won’t happen now, but I am happy I’m able to share it with you.
If you got this far, holy shit, thank you so much for those elusive eyes and ears of yours, I appreciate your attention, and I don’t want to be overly presumptuous, but I think we might just have found our people.
I promise I’ll keep sending you messages with more painfully honest music, or music adjacent bits and bobs. I want to genuinely, honestly connect with the people that truly care.
Please do get in touch, it would be lovely to get to know you better.
TAP THE BUTTON BELOW FOR: