7s7d: D7
“The End of the Night”
Prompt: heaven and earth
Submission of Member: dexter and wanda
Downloads:
mp3
(coming soon)wav
(coming soon)
I'm exhausted. Drained. Lonely. Frustrated. Physically unwell. Every year I accidentally(?) schedule myself way too much to do during this time so that by the end of it I'm deflated from the so-much-output vs no-input, and my husband being away this week made it a lot harder than I anticipated. I mention my mental state today because you can so clearly hear it in this song.
I started this one on the "piano" (my little plastic keyboard) to try to avoid the go-to's and resulting frustrations noodling around at the guitar would inevitably bring up. What I came up with was pretty but: I knew I was going to have to submit an all-in-one-take phone-demo for this because I have very little time to devote to today's song (I was up so late working on yesterday's song and then trying to decompress from the very full and stressful day that I had to sleep in a little later or I wouldn't be able to make it through the day, and I have to leave in about 90 minutes for a gig that's going to keep me away from home all night), so I had to transfer it to guitar in order to execute on it more efficiently.
Lyrically, it's sort of antithetical to the "carpe diem" magnum: you only get one life, and you don't know how long it's going to be, so be careful to not let your regrets compound to an unbearable weight. I think about this pretty often: there's so much life experience I already have to ruminate about and feel shame for, and I'm supposed to pile possibly another 20-50 years of that on top of it? Living the human experience in the human body is hard and painful. So, this is sort of an old-lady-Lex talking to her younger self, maybe I could have put off some of that pain a little longer...
I know from therapy and the years of writing songs and making art and learning about spiritual principles and practices that that is a half-empty way of looking at things, and I'm working on it. But sometimes when you're tired and worn out and your thoughts are that much harder to keep light, the way you're wired to think is what comes to mind first, sot that's just how everything feels. And that's the day I'm having today. And that's okay to feel like that sometimes. This isn't the first super-sad bummer song I've concluded a 7 Songs in 7 Days with (You've Ruined Me comes to mind), so it's sort of interesting to see that by the end of this process I'm usually !deadinside
Despite my emo vibe today, I am REALLY grateful for this experience and don't regret having done it, or the 5 times I've done it before. Keeping the promo aspect of it a little more chill this year wasn't really intentional, but also that was the only way I could have managed it, in retrospect. Also so thankful for this community of people who support what I do, so I have fewer of "these days." Definitely had a lot of time to think about it this week… you beautiful people, this Vault space, what we've been able to create together, and what we might be able to do next.
We'll be meeting up on Wednesday 9/28 to do the all-7-songs-in-a-row-live-for-the-first-time Broadcast - it's a special Vault-Member-Only event at 9PM ET that will be streamed to a secret YouTube link which you can find here (don’t worry, I’ll send a reminder).
I hope you can join me - I'm looking forward to attempting to do these songs in front of humans for the first time (and happy I'll have a few more days to digest/learn them, which I haven't always given myself in the past!), and I'd love to talk with you and get your feedback/ideas/input on some things I'm curious if you're interested in for experiences and releases for next year.
Hoping to get solid recordings of all of these into the playlists and posts soon, but here's another placeholder for now you can check out.
Have a fantastic weekend. Here's to our health, wealth, and, hopefully, some sleep :)
Lex
Thank you so much for your support ❤️
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