keep your eyes on your beautiful dream
it's rainbow time
thinking about what to write, i remembered a comment i got today on a song:
the song was called seashell (you’ll hear it later on in this letter). i wrote it 2 and a half years ago, and at that point in my life, seashells had just become special to me.
i used to live in a room in elephant and castle, with a small high street nearby. the biggest novelty for me was being so close to charity shops, and often i would pick up poetry journals or old magazines to cut out and collage. one day i found a creased copy of ‘the penguin book of japanese verse,’ and tried to make a point of reading every single poem in the book, chronologically.
at this time in my life i had just gone through a hard breakup, and was coming back in to myself, sort of like someone waking up from a trance. i was rediscovering my creativity, my freedom, and my music. despite having studied music and playing gigs whilst i’d been living in london, i hadn’t written a song i was really proud of in about 4 years. that period of writing-but-not-writing was like a prolonged breakup in itself, except it was between me and music. we kept gravitating towards each other, but it just wouldn’t work. i tried to walk away several times. i’d fall back to the piano. but i didn’t know my sound, or what i wanted to say.
it really felt like time had slipped away from me. in that elephant and castle flat, i had an older roommate who, like some doomsday prophet, would harp on and on about how, at 27, i should be going for my life’s purpose before it was too late. i was 27 now. had i really wasted years of my life? was it too late for me to write good songs? was it too late to record and release my first ep? did i miss my chance?
luckily, i had started to write some new works. and they were sounding good. this is when hurricane, grace, and the way we were had emerged. they floated around my head, questioningly: when will you make us into something real? i started working with boris, who recorded my songs in his tiny home studio. we sat up there for hours, creating this world for these songs to live in. although there were moments of magic, the process felt endless.
one day when i was leafing through the poetry book, a phrase jumped out at me: beach rainbow.
i read on:
my 27-year-old, ‘is-it-too-late-for-me’ self felt something inside her warm at that last line. keep your eyes on your beautiful dream, just like the seashell. that, maybe if i kept going no matter what, ‘without anguish,’ without worrying about the far future or the distant clouds, i could get where i wanted to go.
from that point on, the seashell became my sort-of personal hero, a real paragon of ‘unconcern’ and surety. i had an ep to record — keep your eyes on your beautiful dream.
i wanted to be a seashell.
this seashell song i wrote is less about the unconcerned seashell qualities i loved, and more about the seashell as a found object of wonder. i particularly like these lines from the first verse:
still remember when you used to trust fall into sleep / kept the curtains closed but wanted dawn to come on faster / dreaming of a lover lying in the lilac aster
but the real ‘seashell’ moment in my work came through when i conceived the music video for grace. the song itself is about trying to see through others’ perspectives, and what better perspective to see through, than my seashell?
i’ve always been a person who’s anxiously wanted other people’s opinions on what i should do and how i should do it. i mean, no wonder i was freaking out at 27 in a world which had told me to release my music 10,000 years ago in order to have a successful career. my idea of interviewing the seashell was that i could learn something about transience, something about eternity, and something about self-reliance.
i donned my yellow suit and went out to the ocean, in search of my interview subject. and it appeared, on a tiny wooden chair.
we talked for hours about life, death, 5-year-plans and morning routines. and then the tide came in, the shell washed away, and i was left with a feeling of helplessness. where did you go? i didn’t get to ask my final question!
the waves churned around me, as the sand ground under my feet, and the sun melted behind the clouds. the world did what it had been doing every single day since it started this whole thing 4.6 billion years ago. and, as i felt it all happen, i had my answer.
music news
a reminder that tickets are still on sale for my shows in inverness, aberdeen and glasgow, and the shows are coming up soon! buy yours here.
things i liked
✶ i’ve been watching national geographic documentaries — the last tepui and am working on free solo at the minute — both which feature pro climber alex honnold scaling large, monolithic rock faces.
✶ “i am raising the petulant finger of defiance to the solar organization for the first time in 5 billion years,” said alexander abian, an armenian-american mathematician, who believed that destroying the moon would solve all of our problems. (spoiler — it wouldn’t. but i do love the enthusiasm)
✶ the final episodes of stranger things season 4 were excellent. my favourite scene was eddie shredding metallica surrounded by grotesque bat creatures. very metal. (also, enjoy this eddie munson playlist)
✶ a small list of ‘informally named dinosaurs’ (taken from a longer list):
that which cannot be named
nicksaurus
ronaldosaurus
alan
✶ and now, i offer you this music which i spent the weekend packing to, which my boyfriend said made him feel like he was slowly losing his mind. so, if you’re into that kind of thing…
✶ don’t forget this little guy:
✶ a bonus comment on my seashell video was this, which might be the best and clearly most legitimate comment i’ve ever gotten on youtube:
thanks, westlife.
well, it’s the end of another newsletter. to be honest, i wasn’t sure if i was gonna even be able to write this one. it’s been a tough few days. but we seashells know how to get by.
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🌈 olivia