Half Swan

I am still reeling from yesterday. It has been radio silence on my social media accounts, but the day has been busy, still: sending out no less than a dozen e-transfers, packing up and mailing off the first wave of CD orders, picking up some goodies for our babysitter, tying up all sorts of loose ends.

Yesterday was like my birthday, only, maybe, the most stressful birthday of my life. It was so much to pack into a day - launching the album at midnight, mercilessly strangling my social media all day, packing up and playing our last rehearsal, too nervous to eat anything, putting on a big show that night. I felt like a ruched seam in the side of a pretty dress, made to be sewn up tight, or like those ballet flats that curl up into themselves without a foot to keep their shape; it took all of my resistance to just stand. I remembered how I used to feel that nervous about every little show I played, and now I give my past self serious credit for my endurance, even though I did eventually break down. (Who wouldn’t? It’s like having the flu, every time you go to work.)

On the way to our afternoon dress rehearsal, I remarked that I felt I most likely had the easiest job of everyone in the band, because these are my songs and I play them all the time. “That’s not true,” Mike pointed out; “you’ll be hearing so many things happening around you, and you’ll have to keep yourself from getting caught up in it and losing track of what you’re playing.” Because we’ve only rehearsed in smaller groupings, that afternoon dress rehearsal was the first time we actually got to hear the might of the full band, and there were moments where I couldn’t sing; my vocal cords were just paralyzed with emotion. I spent the last few hours of the day trying to summon some safe space in my mind, where I might go to keep from being overwhelmed, to keep singing, unfazed by all the intimidating magic around me, trying to dredge up some past version of me to channel - would it be childhood me, who was fanatic about becoming a musician? Would it be Halifax me, dancing in a band and feeling utterly confident in my right to be there and have a good time? Would it be someone else, like my brother, my beautiful brother, who is so fierce and inspiring to me?

After I’d put the baby to bed, and taken a bath, and managed to glue the most gigantic strips of false eyelashes onto my real ones (pro tip: cut them into four or five chunks and glue those on individually; if I need to wear falsies it’s because something is a big deal, and then I’m nervous about that thing so my hands are shaking which makes it even more impossible to apply falsies, so this trick is a godsend), I had a little lull in my anxiety and was able to finally eat a banana and call it dinner before curling my hair and greeting the babysitter. I called an Uber and spent the whole ride nervously alternating between yawning and burping.

Arriving at the venue was like the opening sequence to a music video: I saw my name and face on the digital marquee above the door, stepped out of the car in my heels and fancy stockings, I looked up to the second floor windows and saw the blue shadows of the opening band performing; I heard the strains of a song about me from the moment I got out of the car, and climbing the stairs to this wonderfully flattering song (“Little Bit Famous”) was just, of course, dreamlike, the most perfect way to arrive at this show.

I couldn’t really talk to anyone until after I played - I really didn’t want to destroy my voice before going up to sing, so I planned to arrive late specifically for this reason. And even though I was only there for about 25 minutes before my set began, every time I raised my voice to shout over the house music, it felt like something was about to go very wrong with my vocal cords. I wish I could have been able to mingle… there were so many missed connections.

We played the album front to back - opening with Hungry Love was a tidal wave of bold horns and sweet guitar and magical percussion, something to knock you back onto your heels right away. It was probably my favourite song of the night - although I was realizing in it that I couldn’t hear my voice on-stage at all, and that it probably wasn’t going to get better. In retrospect, of all the nights that I have never said a thing about the sound being bad on-stage, maybe that was the one show where I should have advocated for myself a little more. But because of circumstances out of our control, we didn’t get a sound check, and it would have been tedious and embarrassing to try to fix it once the set had begun. In the exact spot I stood, it sounded so wrong, I wouldn’t know where to start - it seemed like my monitor wasn’t on at all; the little bits of my voice that I could make out were doused in feedback and reverb. Half of singing is your ears, being able to tell if you’re sharp or flat or dynamically lacking. I don’t have a big bold voice to boom in my chest and vibrate my body so that I can feel the note. If I don’t hear it, I don’t sing well. And then... it’s almost like I start to check out. I didn’t have to worry about being overcome with emotion… I was kind of having the opposite problem, I think.

This morning in bed, I watched all of the video I could find on social media from the show, and from the audience, it really did sound amazing (thank god), and while there were definitely more flaws in my singing than I would have liked, it wasn’t a disgusting or discrediting amount (I hope). But the weirdest thing I couldn’t shake was that so few people talked to me after the set - maybe there were a lot of other events going on that people wanted to visit? Maybe it was just too late a night to hang out afterward? - but it seemed like a lot of people dipped without looking me in the eye and I felt super weird about that, like… maybe they didn’t like the show…? But no, I feel like the whole thing went off pretty classy and magical. I just wish I could have walked around and said hello to everybody before my set.

I didn’t realize that our door money was stashed at the bar, so when I counted up the money in the merch box and it wasn’t nearly enough, I despaired, thinking I would have to go out of pocket to follow through on paying the embarassingly small sums I had offered all my musicians for all their incredibly hard work. I lingered at the bar a little later than I otherwise might have. I needed a drink.

I hung around chatting up who I could. Mike left around 1am to relieve the babysitter, but I stayed until Ian was locking the door behind me. There’s just something lovely about being able to have as many drinks as you like, goddamnit, and have zero demands on your time for as long as you can stay awake, while wearing enough fringe to be the lamp in A Christmas Story and a shelf of eyelashes like a 1950s fashion model.

I got home around 2am and ate a salad, of all things, which did nothing to absorb the booze in my stomach, so that even when I laid down in bed in ways that my muscles insisted were very comfortable, all of my organs disagreed, so I opened my Notes app and struggled through writing a poem, even though I was mortified at the thought of Mike seeing me doing this, being drunkenly self-indulgent at 3am when our daughter would be up in four hours and how, like, weirdly judgemental I would be if it was the other way around.

Tomorrow, or soon after, I will make a more sensible blog post, that tells you all the sterile bullet points about what to consume and how, but today, I just wanted to use my words to capture some of yesterday. I can barely remember a thing about my last album release show, and I really want to remember this one.

Half Swan

Drown
Off, gone
Half swan
Whole pill
All lost too cute no thrill
Just me
Plus ten
Do it again
Stab
Stab you with these little words
No thoughts
Just teeth 
Where’s the one I was looking for
I wanted to dedicate you a song
But I was lost
Gone, off
Drowned, up
Away with the seedlings
And dreamlings
And hard shells
Oh the hard shells
None of the nice things pass through
Into the place where nothing hurts
And everything hurts
Oh the hurts
I know them like the back of my hand
Like songs that float away
Boats that drift out
Good and gone
I have committed them to memory
To all the muscles and organs
Viscera
So that I can know them in my heart of hearts
Long after your nice words are gone
And your smile
And the people who didn’t come
And the holes left unfilled 
The gaping wounds 
That tie me to this earth
Tie me to you
To this little place I keep 
Paying the rent with the blinds shut tight
Always never home
Home
This bone boat
This rib rage
Oh all the stupid words
I put together
To try to catch
This feeling
As if it meant a thing 
To anyone at all
Excuses
And lost trains of thought 
And money, all the money I left behind
Little divots in a scene
Rust
Goodbye to all the things I drew beneath
Here is the new paint 
Here is the old song
Here is the dancefloor
No singalong
Wait and repeat
Until this the end 
Or is it
Float off
No hard line
Nothing is ever black and white
The last thought is always wondering
Off, gone
Drown, swan
Song of a girl I love