Behind the song "Under the Blue of the Moon"

“Under the Blue of the Moon” tells the story of a post-apocalyptic joy ride, capturing a youthful freedom that comes with relinquishing conventionality, while simultaneously highlighting our human fallibility and innate desire to connect deeply. 

In this song, two soulmates are separated in the desert while travelling the treacherous highway of life. They both head towards a rich jungle oasis, witnessing society crumble around them, knowing they shouldn’t wait to be saved. The mantra “there is love in honour, and honour in love” carries them forward. Whether in this life or the next they have vowed to meet again at the pearly white gates of the Getty museum where they will live in rapture like benevolent jungle queens. 

“Under the Blue of the Moon”

We chase all the fear that’s chasing us

Under the blue of the moon, we repeat it’s tune

We fly down the city streets at night

Freedom’s catch twenty two, by the time it’s noon

We move to the groove  - of the final days

Creatures brought bare - by desire and longing

Championed by those - who refuse despair 

Where there is hope there still is something

There is love in honour, and honour in love…

There is love in honour, and honour in love…

Our house, it was once devout

And every prayer that was paid, was enough to be saved

Don’t wait, I will find my way to you

One day we’ll see through the haze of the world we set ablaze

We move to the groove  - of the final days

Creatures brought bare - by desire and longing

Championed by those - who refuse despair 

Where there is hope there still is something

There is love in honour, and honour in love…

There is love in honour, and honour in love…

Behind the song "Revisions"

The song “Revisions” is about experiencing gaslighting. Parts of the song describe the innate beauty observable in a person, while others allude to their darkness, mutability, and ability to manipulate. As a listener, it is easy to catch red flags from outside in quiet creepy sections, “You wanted to keep the control, you said you loved me, said we were chasing the gold, but your eyes, they stayed shaded”. It is clear though, a self-questioning persists, alongside a desire to uncover where things went wrong, to understand pivotal moments of change, or revise the past to capture it’s meaning. The answers however, are in the hands of the gaslighter, and we witness a tragic self-doubt leading to insanity “I fold over revision, revision, revision, revision… and in each version I ask what could have been”...

“Revisions” was featured on CBC’s Saturday Night Jazz; likened to songs by Radiohead or Massive Attack. As a creator I would be remiss if I didn’t highlight some of my favourite collaborative happenings which took place in the creation of “Revisions”. The first involved musical contributions from Chris Dadge, who amped up the creepiness of the quiet sections with eerie percussive textures. As well, Graham Lessard delivered on Brock Geiger’s vision to enter the track on vibes. When this song landed in Pam Tzeng’s choreographic hands, she embodied all the feels, somehow combining confusion, tragedy, evil, despair, and insanity. This was matched by the editing stylings of Landon Johnson who leaned into a “Suspiria” like colour palette, then timed and layered takes to build a narrative journey. I am so lucky that my co-creators bring joy to the darkest subject matters, helping me move towards positive resolution.

Revisions

Changed like a reptile in the shifting light

Tongue unravelling new illusions

Were these true colours, or was I deceived 

Did they just pop, against your new backdrop

I fold over revision ...

And in each version I ask what could have been 

You wanted to keep the control 

You said you loved me 

Said we were chasing the gold

But your eyes, they stayed shaded

To go back to the pause 

In the quiet snow 

I remember what your love was

Soft in the cold

A broken smile

Gentle hands 

You were just a man

You wanted to keep the control 

You said you loved me 

Said we were chasing the gold

But your eyes, they stayed shaded

I fold over revision ...

And in each version I ask what could have been

Behind the song “Stars Still Dying”

The summer my father died, the sky outside turned to a red dome layered by a hazy gray ash blown in from forest fires, and although so many other challenging times lurked in future timelines, in that moment it felt as though the world was ending. 

One question I pondered was “How long do you stay to honour a dream?”

Life is strange in this way. We don't enter, leave, or cycle on the same timeline as our loved ones. We are also tremendously lucky if we leave life with all of its external forces aligning so that we can obtain a personal sense of completion. I wondered how my father felt about what he was leaving behind, and if he had been able to accomplish what his heart desired. 

In the hospital a transition between us happened. We connected less and less in the physical, and we bound together within layers unseen. It is in that lush deep green garden where we combine energy, sometimes revisiting old memories and sometimes the new. When I return from this shared dream space it is as though a veil of smoke has been lifted. There is a shift in the quality of air, and it reminds me of the incense I burned for him that night by the river, while the sky grew dark, helping the stars to shine. 

“Stars Still Dying” is a love song for my father, exalting simultaneously the depth of joy shared, the potential of love, and the recognition of what loss leaves behind. 

Stars Still Dying

The first breath is arresting

We don’t all come full circle at the turn of time

This chalice has a poisoned rim 

We sink, cognizant and comfortable

Knowing that there is no win

And the man who’s a boy can protect the impregnable

Still we all lose some days 

That’s just the way

It was as far as we had dreamed 

The garden grew deep, the incense rising

Lifted as heat to stars still dying

Gone just like magic by the morning

We couldn’t pull back the glass 

So we stood watching 

Our eyes projecting the past

Lenses of love, of longing

To be aware is to tread with care

Resting in the pain you’re living

It was as far as we had dreamed 

The garden grew deep, the incense rising

Lifted as heat to stars still dying

Gone just like magic by the morning

How long do you stay, to honour a dream

to honour a dream

* these are the longform lyrics, matching the full length track on the album

The Pandemic Pie Revival Society

As the years of this pandemic tick forward, I have noticed a fundamental shift in who I am and what I desire. It could be argued that this would be a byproduct of time as a whole, but perhaps these strange times have forced my hand in an accelerated way, and in directions I would not have chosen. 

Before the pandemic, I worked as a flight attendant for a major airline, to supplement a career as a musician. I was always on the move, working, traveling, or touring, and I embodied the work hard play hard ethos (pun intended). I had also just begun learning to fly planes, and my trajectory as a student pilot involved a fast pace, pressure cooker learning environment. 

Being laid off as a flight attendant, and graduating from pilot academy into the largest recession in aviation history, was actually not the first time the rug had been pulled from under my life. What was different this time however, was the abyss of time which stretched ahead and the inability to exercise any freedom of movement within vast physical spaces. 

I had spent a decade exercising my ability to go almost anywhere, not just traveling, but to a music venue, to a restaurant, to the grocery store without paranoia… and all of a sudden the external world circled progressively smaller. For a while, honestly this was bliss. I could finally be in the same location two Mondays in a row, and wake up in the same bed every night. I was able to consider getting a pet, practicing an instrument consistently, or cooking a meal at home. 

But eventually, along with most people, a level of monotony at being physically restricted settled in. Sure, the “privilege” of not traveling was a bummer, but actually where restrictions really burned was in the inability to see loved ones, and questioning if you might accidentally bring covid along with you. 

So where am I going with this really? 

First, I want to acknowledge our realities have morphed through a fundamental change, aptly summed up by a comic strip in which a person tells their friend: “The irony is, now I don’t really want to go anywhere”. 

But more importantly I want to highlight that through the pandemic many people have been able to focus inwards, and have become tenders of their own curated little bi(h)omes. Curators of new small businesses, or home gardeners. This internal focus is something I have always loved about creating art. We are able to create terms that are our own, boundaries of encapsulation, self-directed intent, and as many or as few terms as desired. This process that can be tailored from within, and can positively direct energy, providing both meaning and control.

I wanted to share a few things I tended in my small world during covid, which helped temper the mental darkness of a pre-covid life lost, and broke up the monotony of repeat covid days. 

One is the immediacy of cultivating joy in the moments you are existing in. My pup Juno reminds me of this every day. He demands play, lives to give kisses and cuddles, watches intently out the window muttering mini barks under his breath. Juno lives in full commitment to each moment, and each feeling is a full expression of himself. It is genuinely beautiful to watch. 

Second has been the joy of working towards a live show of the songs from my upcoming record. This backwards re-creation of recorded material, often on new instruments, is painstaking. But like watching a building being built, layer by layer I am overjoyed by its formation. I am in awe of the phenomenal creative support I receive from my music team. We are working towards goals, and although actual performance restrictions change constantly, there is joy in creativity itself and collaborating creatively with others. 

A final ritual that really brought joy to my pandemic life was the institution of dessert nights with my bubble of pilot friends. Dubbed the “Pie Revival Society”, we would rotate a chef each week who would arrive with a themed edible creation. Our light competition of manifesting delectable delights demarcated each week with meaningful conversations, provided perspective on our isolation neuroses, and it gave me the gift of a tiny community. This vagabond family drove away the blues of not seeing family on holidays, and was a reminder that there is always something new to discover in the people and places where you already exist.

I am curious, what joys have cultivated within your covid orbit? Tell me about the small things that brighten your world and radiate through the dimness of these strange days.

Inception - "Powerful Women"

Serving coffee at forty thousand feet in the air, surrounded by the ambient rattle and whirr of an airplane, is a strange time to feel compelled by a melody. But when this would happen, I would do my best to grasp the idea, until I could make it back into a galley to jot my thought down on whatever was available. 

That is how the opening line of “Powerful Women” came to be. Ripped from a napkin, those words and the descending line, “We come from a line of powerful women”, rested in the bottom of my suitcase for over a year. I would glance at it from time to time, holding the phrase deep in my mind, waiting for the right moment of recall. But the idea wasn’t ready yet to be formulated. I knew that the intent was positive, so unlike the mystical chromatic intro melody, I was waiting for positive affirmations and major harmonies. Some songs write themselves quickly, but like it’s subject matter, this one warranted time. There was no need to rush, just ride the arc of rumination. 

In the time that ensued I boarded and deplaned hundreds of jets. I landed in countless cites. I dabbled in the basics of Ableton in hotel rooms. My band tracked and released an album. I changed my shoes to suit the seasons. 

Then one evening I was speaking to my sister and my niece about Christine Margaret Blasey Ford. They were following the proceedings in which she sought justice, not only as a victim of sexual assault, but also on behalf of all Americans who were faced with the appointment of a “good” supreme court justice. I felt profound empathy listening to my young niece confronted by injustice upheld by systems that are meant to protect. I was reminded of my own raw moral compass, that had guided my own convictions when I was young. The bright light shining on the edge of the knife, before we are whittled down by the weight of the world. 

At that moment, I wanted my niece to retain her determination. To speak her mind and be an ally for others. I wanted her to feel like her heart, her beliefs, and her words mattered. I wanted her to know that bravery is rewarded, even if the results are not always immediately visible. I wanted my niece to be reminded that positive change can arrive quietly and slowly. That strength precedes her, and that we are reminded of it when we turn backwards to observe how human rights have evolved over time. 

“We come from a line of powerful women.” The statement I had carried for so long appeared before me. It is a universal truth. Whether it reminds you of your family, or of women throughout history. Somewhere, a woman showed up; with so much to lose, and so little to gain; somewhere she shows up still, because of justice and conviction. That type of strength is formidable. It burns bright, bright enough to remind that there is hope for the future. 

Powerful Women

We come from a line of powerful women

History says a lifetime is short 

but it can be well spent

She knows it's a ride

It stops where it stops, ya

the sights are the sights

Still sometimes it breaks her heart 

Still sometimes it fills her eyes in the dark of the night

Silence has a price

but still there's a cost to using her voice

So if the fuel of that fire ignites 

As you stand in it's flames 

know I see you

It's the brave who remain in that light

If the battle lasts long

Know I feel you

We come from a line of powerful women

History says a lifetime is short 

but it can be well spent

When I think of time

I have to believe 

that justice presides 

So if the fuel of that fire ignites 

As you stand in it's flames 

know I see you

It's the brave who remain in that light

If the battle lasts long

Know I feel you 

We come from a line of powerful women

Racism

Today I want to talk about racism, anger, hate, assault. 

When I deliver a version of content on social media, my aim is to connect, to encourage thought, to uplift. I make a conscious choice to pivot towards light. 

One reason for this is because I know so many people who already carry so much emotional weight. Both at a personal level, and because of our shared societal realities. These are complex times for most of us. 

The second reason is that, despite being carved deep by challenging experiences in my personal life, when I sit back and ask myself what I want to bring into the world, I often land on a desire to share something positive, something that moves towards hope and beauty. Creating is a way of processing, whereas output is a way to gift back to our world. 

That being said, today I want to use this platform to say a few things: 

• Please take a look at me, I am a person of mixed descent.

• Please remember that when you discriminate against Asians, you target me, and you target my family, you target our shared community.

• Most people perceive me in a way that is convenient to them. What you have assumed, or believe you see, does not actually erase my complex background, history, lived experiences, cultural experiences, or experiences with racism. 

• Let this be a reminder, that I am the friend you project hate towards if you are racist, my family member is the elderly person you are considering perpetrating violence against.

We live in challenging times, but even if you do believe “someone else” or “some other group” is to blame for your circumstances, the only person you can hold accountable for your actions is yourself. When you verbally target, physically assault, or sexually assault, harass, and objectify others, know that your character is defined by your actions. 

I encourage you to pivot towards kindness. 

x Clea

Hazy Days - Lyrics Explained

Have you ever known, the instant you met someone, that you were profoundly connected? Without uttering words, your aura’s interlock into a familiar pattern, one you couldn’t have conceived existed before that moment? Time stands still, and something metaphysical shifts as you sink into the depths of each other’s eyes, and together you are transported to a space not bound by human dimensions. 

“Hazy Days” is a retelling of that experience, once clear, but now only a remembrance. The song is an acknowledgement that we are not always able to stay connected within each lifetime. We are each on a journey larger than we can control or conceive. But sometimes, if we are lucky, special moments allow us to trace the spaces between our fingers while our palms are pressed together. In this way we feel and remember what it is to be mirrored, understood, cherished, and forgotten. Each experience of love is a gift, no matter how transient. 

During the second verse, I imagine the tailors of time embodied by wise deities in the original gardens. I envision them spinning the tapestry of fate from delicate spider web timelines. The lovers in this song are creatures entangled in one version of a lifetime, but through their tears they glimpse the mirage of the archaic garden before them, where their origin story began. For a moment they glimpse an alternate outcome, the version in which fate unfolds in their favour and they are not divided by circumstance, but another cycle through reality pulls them apart, their souls waiting to connect again in the ultimate timeline. 

Hazy Days is a brief flash of summers past, and I hope the listener is transported to a nostalgic moment they would like to remember.

Two Types of Happiness

Perhaps even more elusive than succeeding in love, is our success as humans at finding happiness. We see glimpses of it around us, we are inundated with pictures of it, on occasion we even grasp it when fortune and our hard work align. 

More often than not though, happiness as an external idea. It’s a debt-like cloud that floats above us blocking the sun, or an inconsistent friend who shows up at their own convenience. Happiness gives us the little fix needed to keep us invested, but for many people, happiness shows up too infrequently. 

The conditions for happiness appear to be a complex rubix, requiring everything to align. There is no equation that fits all sizes, and the depth with which we each struggle is completely unique. With complete respect, I believe the choices each person takes towards achieving happiness, must truly be tailored and unique to them alone. This post is not intended to question anyone’s personal methods. Rather the intent is to realign our perception and relationship with happiness as part of a daily reality. 

But first we need to examine love. When it comes to love we have all heard the adage, “it takes two to tango”, and it is true, a good relationship shouldn't require a mountain of work, but both parties need to mutually invest a certain amount of energy. 

Love has two faces.  

The more exciting version of love involves falling. The elation, excitement, nervousness, novelty, the flattery to the ego that someone might be interested in you. These feelings are a perfect combination for lighting up the body and brain in gratifying ways. This type of love is like riding a wave, even if you make it onto the ride, the experience is inevitably fleeting. 

The second type of love moves more slowly and is carried with you at your core. Think of how you love a family member or a friend. That warm, solid glow, stays alight on account of longevity. This type of affection is built from a series of small gestures and experiences that create a solid foundation you can return to like a home. 

What I want to posit is that happiness parallels these two types of love, except for one major difference, which is that you are in the relationship with yourself.  

The first type of happiness, like falling in love, exists in line with immediate gratification. It’s the feeling you get when the universe rewards you. It’s the moment you land your dream job, win a prize, or just buy yourself something nice. Like sun streaming through the clouds, you are lit up by a temporary surge of endorphins. In the best way this reward reminds us to stay on track and work hard, and at the worst chasing the feeling fuels our addictive self-pacifying habits. Often this type of happiness depends on external circumstances, and like a perfect sunny day, it is hard to chase. 

Personally I find the second of these parallels more interesting, because I am fascinated by the idea that our relationship with happiness throughout life can evolve. Similar to a relationship with a partner, perhaps the first step in that journey involves a choice to acknowledge, participate, and invest in order for improvement to occur. 

Happiness is remembered in moments, but elevating our overarching enjoyment of life, involves developing and maintaining a positive relationship with oneself. Is it worth investigating what this looks like for you? The more you invest in being attuned to your needs, desires, and boundaries, the closer you are to understanding how to build a reality that aligns with, and elevates, your experience of life. It is a life-long partnership, so the sooner you commit and invest, the sooner you will see a return. 

I hope you choose to acknowledge where you are, regardless of what that looks like. Know that you are deserving of the self-care and knowledge needed to improve your daily life. Every time we build and lose relationships we become more informed about who we are, so remember, similarly, each variation and experience of yourself you move through, is also its own form of progress. Do you believe you are worthy of the effort and investment? I do!

Let me know your feels @cleaanais

Success and Failure in 2021

…. and two ways to reset your day.

Driving home from my flight today, I simultaneously toyed with the dichotomy of my current reality. When I consider my life, on one hand I see a rich journey. My experience has been filled with unbelievable privilege to have traveled the world as a flight attendant and musician. My parents gave me the gift of education, and I now have an undergraduate degree, as well as a painstakingly earned Commercial Pilot’s license. 

At the same time, I am an adult with comparatively nothing to my name, and Covid has only accentuated this. For every step towards ‘progress’, I feel like I fall backwards ten. Guaranteed, I could have made very different choices along the way, but at the same time my experience genuinely seems to resonate with others. I repeatedly encounter people in all walks of life who feel like they have fallen short of the landmarks their subconscious evokes. The issue is that these markers, like outdated stories of renegade cowboys and disney princesses, are deeply conditioned within us. How impossible is it to never consider the reality of your parents at your age, the ways in which they had already made strides towards careers, homes, families, and question how you have not reached landmarks you believed you would have by a certain point in life?

The reality is however, the structures that allow us to achieve the “fundamentals of success” have shifted in the landscape around us. What was once attainable is progressively unrealistic. Access to checking all the boxes of ‘adult success’ becomes narrower every day. We all know these stories, so I won't elaborate much: 

The exponential growth of urban property value vs the miniscule increase in wages, and the unaffordability of owning a home if you live in a major urban centre. 

The possibility of career tenure juxtaposed with a search for meaningful work, maintaining a work life balance, achieving fair wages, and good benefits.

Modern day relationships and the evolution of what “conventional” looks like in partnerships. Not to mention the impact of this on the choice to have and raise children, or to not have them at all. 

Ideals like these may not be yours, but they can ruminate uncomfortably at a very deep level. Despite what your intellect values, it is challenging in a modern world to feel as though you have “achieved” as much as was once possible. I have struggled to avoid circling the drain towards this conundrum of despair, and recovering from that mental cloud can be frustrating if you focus on justifying, controlling, or changing your reality quickly when the results are so dependent on external factors.

What I want to offer are two stoic coping mechanisms when faced with the stress of this type of “failure”. 

The first won’t make you feel better, but I suggest that your approach is to accept it like a law of physics: 

If you weather this storm of feeling you will continue to have bad experiences, but there is also a guarantee that you will also have good days, experiences, and relationships too. 

The second invokes some positive subconscious re-organizing, but with time can help you re-align; If our feelings of accomplishment are tied to our perception of success, then I urge you to redefine what success is, and ask yourself: 

Do you enjoy the company you keep, and if so, are you working on being good to those who you love? (Yes = know you are succeeding) 

What do you have that counts as a solid foundation now? The people, the place, the work you can count on? (Any answers = know you are succeeding) 

Can you isolate what activities give your day meaning? Can you take small strides to work more on what you love so that your weeks are driven by meaning? (Yes = know you are succeeding) 

Your life is your personal trajectory of time, and you can affect its narrative arc. In the grand scheme of things when you consider your past do you remember what you have done or what you did not have? The thing that is actually worth keeping “tabs” on is if you're building relationships and experiences that feel healthy for you, and that also serve the external world around you positively. 

I gently suggest you write your own list of reminder questions that align with your personal values so that you can answer them on days that are hard. So that you can move closer to a trajectory that truly highlights the unique path that is meaningful for you. 

While I work on my little projects at home during Covid, I am acutely aware that I am not where I believed I would be in 2021. Like you I am restricted. What I am grateful for is that I am infusing my energy into music again, using the time I might not have had otherwise. I know that I am slowly gaining hours as a pilot towards a new license. Maybe this work will pay off, maybe it is enough to give my own weeks a narrative arc that is built from my own meaning. I would never have flown a plane or played a rock show if I had held too tightly to what was “expected” of me. I remember I am lucky to have my support system virtual and otherwise, and this continues to fill my heart. 

You should know that just by showing up you are succeeding. You deserve to feel success surrounding achievable goals you set for yourself every day. Remember that investing a small amount of energy each day into something you love, will eventually build a life you can feel good about. The flip side to the impossibility of our subconsciously programmed landmarks, is that if you do let go of these ideals, for a moment you experience freedom. You get to feel good about building your own dreams, in which the markers of failure and success are yours. 

Tell me how you feel! Does this align? DM me @cleaanais on Insta

*this is a think piece not medical advice, I encourage seeking professional help if that speaks to you!

HOW TO CAPTURE MAGIC IN THE RECORDING PROCESS …and 3 reasons why it's worth the time

There’s definitely a sequence of steps to creating a great record, and I am excited to peel back those layers in time, but right now, in the space suspended between Christmas 2020 and the start of a hopeful New Year, I want to talk for a moment about where the magic happens. 

Like any type of creative, it is easy to get deep in the work, to become bound with intent, and fixated on the macro and micro details of a project. When you have invested everything you have, and more, into getting your material ready for a recording studio, it can be hard to not hold fast to your expectations and how you want things to unfold. This pressure becomes worse when paying an expensive studio day rate while watching the clock run down on your available time. So logically, I am a big advocate of preparation. Maybe it has to do with getting the most out of the experience, or perhaps it is out of respect for the people who are choosing to invest their time in your project, either way, it’s worth having a plan to nail down the fundamentals for what you have prepared first.

What I have found though, over the years, is that it is super important to allocate a large chunk of time to experiment. Really! That undirected space is where the real magic happens, and here are the reasons why: 

1) Each person you have trusted to be a collaborator in the process (including your engineer), arrives with a wealth of personality and experience that will broaden the scope of what you do. 

You will work with people whose aesthetic taste does not align with yours, or whose abilities are different than what you expected. Regardless, the journey that has brought each contributor to this moment is built from a special series of personal preferences; growing up listening to certain genres of music, comfortability with suspended endings or dissonant chords, or nostalgia for easy listening major endings and a basic four on the floor. It is inevitable that we are each imprinted by sound in unique ways, so we each bring a unique voice to the work at the table. 

Do you remember the telephone game, or those little flip drawing books where you just see the end of what the last person has drawn and you use it to create what comes next on the page? 

When you hand over an outline to another creative they get to fill in the colours and detail from their unique perspective. Inevitably, it is different than what you would have done, but this process envelops a single person’s idea in more complex and intriguing layers, building an expansive universe that can be whittled down later into a final product.

2) By leaving open time and space for creative play, you move from cerebral planning/executing mode to experimental/listening mode.

It can be a challenge to watch your ideas splattered by sonic imitations of Jackson Pollock, but beyond the initial hump, allowing space for experimentation gives other players the opportunity to process and expand on their contribution. It gives the chance to align a musical idea with a new instrument and its characteristics, to explore tone and melodic variation. A session player can take time to apply their experience to deliver the best iteration of an idea, or create something completely different that you never would have envisioned. 

The gift of this process is that you have to listen in a focused way with fresh ears. There is the opportunity for excitement, and to discard the intrinsic assumptions you have developed about your creation, through renewed experimentation . Here, you can evaluate if the interpretation of others aligns with your intended output, and see if what you initially tracked is landing how you hoped. 

3) In the long term you give yourself the gift of being continuously surprised, even if you are the creative source for the work. 

When you take a step back and give others the space to contribute creatively, there is the opportunity to view and learn about your work through new eyes. This is the space in which you move from “work” to creativity, and I truly believe that that translates into tangible energy that is imprinted in a good track. 

Once upon a time this magic was created by a band recording live, breathing together, and the challenge of everyone executing a performance from top to bottom as a team. In a digital age, music can be made where each element is individually tracked until it is perfect, then a computer can further align tempo, pitch, and adjust everything else conceivable. This sterility can be combated when you leave time to tonequest using different gear, by recording ambient sounds from objects on hand, or by making time to improvise new parts on instruments you don't play. What we do have in our digital age is a newfound freedom to re-track, and capture the magic within moments of innovation. Giving creative leeway to session musicians, and engineers who have dedicated their lives to becoming experts in their craft, means each contributor can be excited about their creative imprint on a project. The aliveness of this open, collaborative process captures the almost imperceptible energy of the people in the room, the molecules in high vibration when everything about a take aligns. 

When I listen back to the records I have made (well over a decade’s worth), I am nostalgic for the parts I expect and know best, but the real sugar comes in the form of treat surprises, the detail work of the people I shared those experiences with. It’s in the moves I wouldn’t have chosen, the tones that were, at that time, outside of my comfort zone. Many of these musical choices I questioned at the time, but now my collection of albums is laced with magic left by people who I love, by the moments where they speak to me in the quirky language of musical mannerism. 

I take the same chance with this writing process. I put my microcosm of ideas out into our shared world in my way, and the excitement lies in knowing those thoughts will be absorbed into different realities by each reader. If I am lucky that bridge will reconnect back, and I will get to hear from you. Drop me a line, I would love to know what your experience has been as a creator. Follow me at @cleaanais on Instagram.

Until next time! 

Clea