The sun keeps splitting through the sky and I can’t stop smiling because of it. The air smells different. The sky is blue. Plants start to bloom. I listen to Indie Folk again. Everyone around me is happier. I’m optimistic for a change. My hair even sits better.
I love this time of year. Every single year I forget how big of an impact the season has on my mood, and I forget how much I love the transition
out of cold, miserable dark.
I should be miserable. There are too many deadlines and the stress of trying to meet them is all too overwhelming. There is also a strange air of melancholy as this is the final month of uni and it is apparent that there are very complicated questions that we can no longer run from that need answered. But I just can’t help but feel optimistic. The days are finally longer. The weather is finally warmer. I can feel the sun cleanse some of my pessimism. I feel like I can spend more time with the people I love.
It always catches up to me though. Once the novelty of the weather disappears, I return back to same place I was during winter. It’s fleeting, but it’s nice for a while. The reality of university ending will hit me soon, but April has helped to delay this inevitability.
The good weather has also coincided with our first few official gigs as What It Means and it has been so much fun. Everything falls into place in such a satisfying way when the four of us perform together. I am humbled every time I share the stage with them - it even makes me question my own ability as a musician sometimes! We’ve had people in the crowd dancing and singing along, which is always so good to see and the vibes have been fantastic at every single one so far. Means we must be doing something right…
We’ve been dancing, we’ve been moshing and we’ve been enjoying the sunshine.
And isn’t that what it means?
I’m starting this blog for the same reason I started writing music, because I’ve been thinking. I’m not sure if this is just for me, or if I was hoping for you to read it, but thoughts will exist with or without an audience. Writing might be a way to turn those thoughts into a conversation but I don’t think it needs to be. For me, at least tonight and with the new What It Means songs, creative writing has been a way to refine, a way to take the mixed up thoughts and turn them into something more usable (for lack of a better word).
Writing for our first single Aching in August is my best example. I spent the last half of last summer with a knot in my stomach and I didn’t know why. So I started looking for words and I just sort of stumbled into “bummer”, “lame”. At the start they feel too simple, nothing I can really think of. Then I realise, maybe they are too simple, there has to be more. So I become a detective and I start working on the case:
What’s a bummer? My summer.
It’s lame compared to what? John Hughes movies and being 14 and probably every other summer there ever was.
Suddenly it’s not simple anymore. That summer tying knots in my stomach is this imaginary monolith of fun in the sun. The knot is a bundled up mess of future fears and regressive regrets. Compared to what I started with, I had a lot more to work with now. The song turned from a pile of unhelpful whining into a way I could really confront the reality of what summer means to me. In the end it wasn’t at all as scary or as lame as I had thought.
So, at the moment that’s what writing means to me. I think without setting it all out and giving myself a fun way to explore it, some of the things wrapped up in the cobwebs of my head might remain there forever, so I’ll keep on writing. I hope this makes some sense, if not I might just have to write some more.