Bundled up in my bungalow, cloudy skies and a harsh wind just outside my window, I opened an email from my uncle that shifted my entire direction.
“The day before departure! Not very excited but when Roj came, rather left I supplied much needed salt water to this parched earth. He gave me a perfectly lovely green Kodak – ca-razy about it! Then he left and I wept and packed and went to bed and slept and woke up and left!”
My grandma’s words, my Nana, were alive and well staring back at me from her diary written over 90 years ago in 1930. 21 and still in college for theatre, she led me into a story of travel by train across the United States, friends we’d never heard of, houses that I’d lived near in los angeles, oil rigs on the pacific coast, and family we never knew we had. The pandemic had just started back here in 2020, and I was hooked on a story from long ago.
Okay, so I was basically in a personal lockdown before March of 2020 anyway. I had moved away from the city into a bungalow on the beach. I was working 2 full-time jobs but that fierce independence led me to show up to my guitar every day in january. After 4 years of struggling to write, I wrote 21 songs in 30 days. I was going to make an EP and I had spent the last month and a half choosing the best ones to craft. And then…all hell broke loose on earth.
Working from home, I was able to keep focusing on the EP. One day at a time, one “you got this” at a time. The songs were feeling heavy, carrying all of the burdens that come with carrying a lifetime of anger and sadness thus far. Even the beach was cloudy and cold, and then I read:
“I supplied much needed salt water to this parched earth.”
And I laughed. And laughed. For 10 minutes straight. My memories of my Nana have always painted her as a wordsmith and very melodramatic, but this? wow, just wow, that’s better than soap opera drama, it’s 21 year old Elizabeth Ann saying goodbye to her boyfriend…for 6 weeks…drama. And I laughed.
Suddenly, I had my guitar in hand and wrote a little ditty of a melody around those words. And then I picked more words from her diary and wove a tale around her actual story. It was rich with the feeling of travel in the 1930’s, of a girl still in college going on a trip to a city I lived in for over a decade to see family we didn’t know we had. There was sadness, longing, excitement, and thrills. All told in the words of a girl who was just along for the ride.
The song quickly replaced another as the 4th song on Haunted. But it changed the meaning of the whole EP and helped me to brighten the other 3 songs. Yes, we may carry around a heavy weight from our past, but we also carry around the laughter and silliness that lighten the load.
So come join me in my newest adventure from here to the bungalow! Choose your classic ride (1967 ford mustang anyone? Oh, we need more room? Let’s go for the 1968 VW van!), open the windows, and turn up the tunes. We’re heading to the coast with our green kodaks ready for the next thing to inspire a change in direction.
I’ve got my truetone, you bring the map.
