21-10-26
I'm typewriting, pushing paper to resist blue-glare, not so much an act of rebellion as an imposition: my iPad's battery refuses to charge this morning. Just like that. Because it only ever pours when the rain comes these days. Meanwhile, my Mac is busy copying files before forcing me into reformatting my main photo archive drive.
Did I say rain? Nah: it's monsoon season.
…
Let's say you spend three days in an isolation cell. No daylight or any means of tracking time. And let's imagine they pull you out as the sun hovers just above the horizon, barely visible. Could you tell sunrise from sunset? Birds would be a clue, in summer, but it's the dead of winter. The birds are gone, the visible spectrum rarely dips towards anything warm, and snow drifts are levelling everything you see, blurring the edges between earth and sky, and muffling all sounds. Could you tell?
My temptation to act as if nothing has changed is odd and possibly damaging. Following the same movements when a crucial cog is missing, as if mechanics will continue to purr, tick and tock and carry on... it's wrong. Completely wrong. Life doesn't work that way. Things stall and break.
I watch days and nights unfold without any real agency or purpose, stuck on automatic. Waiting and waiting as if momentum will somehow shift on its own. I should look to the past instead, much much further than seems reasonable. I should again find those solitary days when hours were never empty, and remember how I existed. Back when I was a Time Lord. Back when we dreamed eternal.
Sunrise or sunset.
Or sunrise.
There’s always a choice.
In the weeks (and now months) following our separation, I've disappeared into Logic Pro. I haven't immersed myself in photography (too painful, given our history), but music. I've written new songs, lyrics, completed drafts I'd accumulated, recorded and recorded, losing all sense of time and place for hours on end. It often felt like pouring gasoline on a blazing inferno, and yet, strangely, it's helped. The very definition of catharsis. The result is a new Jade Leary album on the way, the first one in (checks discography) sixteen years. Man, that's a long time.
The title is an old one, something I never used "officially" : Chase and Mercury. Eleven songs, ~39 minutes running time, none of it upbeat and none of it even remotely trying to sound relevant. A lot of "passages" interspersed, most songs fading in and out, a bit like traversing a series of empty rooms. Slowly though, very very slowly.
I haven't bothered with perfect vocal takes—I've been going along with whatever emotional overload happens to happen. I'm not sure those moments will actually be audible, but I'm fine with it if they are. It does shake here and there. Let it shake.
It's a breakup album—no point hiding what's plainly evident. The cover is an image I shot while riding shotgun last summer, on our trip to Jonquière, driving our daughter back to school. We were still weeks away from telling the kids, and I didn't have all the facts yet, either, so I was still clinging to hope. We had a great time that weekend. Really.
On our return trip I poured my soul—which, obviously, didn't change a thing.
The album's 99% done so...coming soon.
Sublimating darkness, I guess.
Pushing towards sunrise.
