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

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

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.

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