Break the spells

I remember very vividly that, when I was sixteen or seventeen, I would get nauseous from how close writing would bring me to myself. I was mainly keeping a diary. That process, sitting down and desperately trying to trap on paper all the fast feelings and train of thoughts, would immediately frustrate me. The mind moves quicker than the hand, how can I keep up? And even when, somehow, I managed to match the pace, I would end up feeling too close to the object, and annoyed by its extreme proximity.

And since the object was, most of the time, me, like a good teenager obsessed with their inner world and its tragedies, I would just feel nauseated by my own self. Being nose-to-nose with that self, not really able to take a step back and look at the picture from a reasonable distance.

Sometimes I feel like I am bound to be myself, irreducibly and forever. With room for improvement, but also with this lingering feeling that what defined me in my teenage years will somehow always define me, even if only a little less now, even if I’ve made peace with it. Lately, however, I’ve been delighting in toying with the idea that things that seemed radically destined to stay the same for eternity can actually change. Mind blowing. And also that things can simply be things, like thoughts are just thoughts, without always carrying the monumental power of “defining you.”

Today I welcomed a peaceful, fresh sentiment of writing for the bliss of writing. I was anticipating the moment with a sense of comfortable pleasure. The act of writing as a floating bubble where there’s no rush, no obligations, no exhaustion, almost no needs, and writing becomes this round shape with no sharp edges that I can sit or lay down in, and there’s a breeze, and the minutes that go by are soft and tender, like the eyelid closing over the eye, making it damp and safe.

I like to envision writing returning more often, taking a seat in my daily life, being light. I like that, recently, I’ve had a few assignments that put this craft back on my plate, quietly building a bridge to all the possibilities writing bears and offers.

Writing, just like music, just like any creative activity one loves being busy with, can be anything you want it to be. And trying to write well is a beautiful way of finding structure and shapes and rhythm and direction inside an endless sea of options.

Along the lines of writing

I interviewed one of my all-time favorite bands, Big Thief, for the music magazine Heaven. The interview will appear in the September issue, timed with the release of their new album, Double Infinity. I am still savoring and treasuring the conversation I had with Adrianne Lenker, Buck Meek and James Krivchenia, especially because I had to listen back to it in order to transcribe it. It became such a meticulous task that I ended up spending three or four hours inside a 45-minute voice memo. Yes, inside, because it really felt like I was inside the recording, moving through the breaths and the laughter to catch the right word and the right inflection. Which are, of course, nuances that don’t exactly translate onto the page, but now they live quite perfectly in my mind.

It’s funny to realize how much a voice is a vessel of intimacy. How close you can feel to someone just by knowing their voice so well. The hesitations and the pauses, the excitement, the vocabulary, the color and the texture of it. This is more of a general reflection, of course, a contemplation that naturally followed. But I’m thrilled about the interview itself. I think it turned out to be an inspiring and insightful read, and I’m grateful I had the chance to meet these musicians and speak with them in this way. I mean, I have their poster in my living room. Crazy.

(My favorite concert of 2023 was Buck Meek with his band at Tolhuistuin, in Amsterdam. I almost had no words to describe the crispness, the sweetness, the masterful playing, the chemistry of the band and their glowing sound. A big highlight.)

Along the lines of not writing

I played a couple of solo/duo shows in June, and I’m going to play a band show on August 29th at Concertgebouw in Amsterdam (info and tickets here). Wow, it’s going to be wild to jump on stage with the band again after a few months. It’s going to be great.

I am also performing during Grachtenfestival on August 18th, in a duo with trumpet star and excellent person Alistair Payne (info and tickets here). We will mostly play music he’s been composing, and probably some older material from both of us, reshaped for this tiny band: me on vocals, and guitar? Keys? And him on trumpet. And synths? So many questions. Come to the gig if you want to know the answers.

In June, Josephine Odhil and I (together with MOJO and AT EASE) announced our upcoming double bill tour that will happen in December in the Netherlands. I remember that the last newsletter was all about how much I wished to be touring with my own music, and here we go! A nice first little dip in the waters. Clearly, I’m going to be over the moon. This is our schedule:

Other things will happen in September, October and November, but I think I’ll save those for an update at the end of the summer. This Sunday I will be leaving for a two-week trip in Portugal, in a camper van. That’s a first for me! Like it’s a first that I have been taking surf lessons (only two so far), and it’s been ridiculous, tiring and fun.

There’s nothing like doing things you thought you would never see yourself doing when you are doing them with people you love. It sounds really really cheesy, forgive me. But it feels so much more precious to be breaking an old belief about yourself with a loved one who is there with you to multiply the elation. So, like a perfect circle, this brings me back to the start.

I am going to break my own spells, and I am going to carry teenage me within me like a cape, but inside out, more like adult me is a big warm cape that embraces younger me, and we are a beautiful matryoshka doll, or an onion made of many rings, and the heart stays the heart, but the rings are free to enjoy writing a diary, sleeping in a camper van, learning to surf.

Thank you for reading,

I hope to see you at one of my future concerts.

Marta