i wrote hyperfocus while falling out of centre frame. we danced a volatile dance stretched over a border. the pandemic was ending, but so were we. it left a fire in me burning.
the creative process began in my childhood bedroom one night, keys and mic in hand, pen and paper at my side. i had to pull it out of me— the grief, the anger, the shame. i didn’t want to censor it, i just wanted it out.
i started working on my debut ep a couple months after that initial purge, this time newly relocated to montréal. a new language on my tongue. a new apartment, all alone. i’d never written a body of work before start to finish. a sonic carving of worlds. hyperfocus marked the very beginning of the ep for me. track 01. that’s all i knew.
in studio, i wanted the chorus to mimic the delirious heaviness that knotted my forehead to my chest to my stomach IRL. at homy, we recreated the sensation with the moog swelling in and out as my vocals cried and swam around. we played with the sound design of my lead vocal to sonically express my disorientation by first introducing my vocal line with a doubling effect that slowly dries out into a singular lead as i bend into my chorus lyric. gab and clem gave it serious depth. they gave it body. production felt like soul relief, blurring the lines and dimensions of sound and painting exact emotion. a true and unique catharsis i’d never experienced before quite like that.
hyperfocus will forever be a special healer of mine. it will forever bring me back to that place in time. back to my childhood room, april 21, 2021. dancing alone. purging the grief of it all. calling my mom in to listen.
i wrote do it again august 2020. covid summer. pre-sabotage. or, perhaps, in the midst of it blindfolded.
for as long as i can remember, i’ve feared men. i’ve feared saying no to them. i’ve feared the persuasion of their thirst and the violence of their fury. all the ways they could grab and bend and contort me. i learned to appease in order to survive. i learned it as a sort of love language, which bled into nights looking over my shoulder, claws out.
it took me twenty-seven years to begin to believe myself. to secure my boundaries. to stand guiltless in my no. to trust myself and harness into gut intuition. to hold it sacred. to hold my mind and body as its own entity— my own — not one for your crooked, dripping fingers to comb through and loosen.
i lost years of my life in the shadows of your approval and validation. i even became like you in ways that still haunt me in the in between moments of my days. in my breath. i bit back and i bit hard. i lost my foresight. i had your skin under my fingernails. i never wanted that.
sometimes, i still feel sorry for the panic that lived rampant in my body. that when you acted innocent in your harm, i couldn’t shine light on the wound and exit softly. i became it, sharply.
i was living in a state of hyper-vigilance while making this ep. while making do it again. desperately in need of healing. of recalibration. of self-compassion and recognition. of forgiveness. and deeply in need of purging: the cycles, the vices, the misuse.
i woke up. i weeded it out of me. (i’m still weeding it out)
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