Hello,
I'm Sandrayati,
and welcome to episode 2 of Inhabiting Words,
a series where I read
out journal entries from when I was writing
my second studio album called Inhabit.
The album is coming out in waves,
groups of three songs,
each wave a storytelling.
Today I'm reading from the time I was
writing the second wave called Release,
a wave inspired
by the menstrual phase of the cycle.
It's the time of deep winter,
the shedding, the bleed.
It mirrors the new moon.
The element of this phase is water,
a new beginning,
a flow.
This is the start of the cycle when everything is being released,
creating a spaciousness
for what is to come.
It's a time associated with a need for deep rest,
for letting go into the flow.
Before I begin reading,
I just want to say in all honesty that I didn't write each song
with these waves in mind.
They probably could live in either one of the waves,
as the phases of a cycle cannot
live independently of each other.
Yet each song carries an energy,
and only when the song was finished did I start to feel
into where to place them in the appropriate wave.
And maybe that would change if I did that exercise today.
I just want to say this also that we're breaking
away from the linear form of thinking about
cycles,
that these groups that I'm starting to organize don't really exist.
They're just
here for an understanding.
And I want to just speak to the wholeness of the cycle being
a life force energy,
and for us to invite a feeling into this life force.
And that can be our focus as we go into the reading.
So the excerpts I'm reading from today are inspired by the songs
Jawline,
Ashes, and Seafaring.
When we doubt the sun,
it doesn't change the timing of it rising.
When we close our eyes,
it doesn't mean the world around us disappears.
What does it take for the sleeping to wake in the dark of a winter?
How would it take for a knowing to place itself deep in the center
of being who you are?
What does it take?
What does it give?
How long would it take to look in the
mirror and see someone other than yourself?
There are strangers in your eyes.
There are strangers in your brows.
There's a new land in your blood.
There's a knowing in your mind.
Mesmerized by space between me and the ceiling.
I'm tired today,
day two of this new cycle.
First cycle of the year,
second cycle since the solstice.
Moon is waxing and I am waned out.
I am new.
I can feel myself reimagining,
reconstructing,
regenerating.
Doubt still comes creeping in, reason clawing.
But I'm not giving in to my wounds.
I am healing.
I'm remembering when I wrote this.
It came to me after I was slowly realizing
that I wanted to be a mother.
And it landed in me in a dream.
And after that dream, I wrote this.
I can see what's most valuable to me is you.
I don't know who you are and I don't need to yet.
As you are is how I need you to be right now.
My work is my call,
is my right,
is my all right now.
But only you can change my line of sight.
Only you can be the reason why I fight with my palms wide open.
First let me grieve who I am,
who I needed to be.
A version of a million faces imagining.
What's real is how we are, when we love.
And only you can change my line of sight.
Only you can be the reason why I fight with my palms wide open.
With my palms wide open.
So I decided to share this because this was a realization
that started to form during my writing process of this album.
And I have been particularly intrigued
by how the first day of the bleed is the day that you start counting
how many weeks pregnant you've been.
So literally that first shedding is a seed for new life.
And of course with pregnancy this is so physical.
But I find that this can exist with or without
the process of actually forming a human.
It exists symbolically as well,
which makes it a particularly powerful,
potent moment of the cycle.
Hold it in my jawline.
I blur my eyes to find what's the same here.
Cemented grey,
a place
for parking.
Cold tile floor,
storefronts calling,
come,
come in.
I held the wheel I
had to be here.
Hold it in my lashes,
the water from the sky.
Feeling is different here.
I've not found a disguise in what I was born into.
Soft cotton and wool wrap my body.
The
sun pours into the kitchen.
I'm bending off the edge of the chair,
shaded and warm.
Naked
in bloom to the power of nine.
Printed into the air, I breathe in the north.
Won't you
let me take back the river in the heavy rain?
So what happened was I had this page open
and I was just listening to what we had recorded
and improvised some melodies with the words
that stuck out.
And it was such a fun process for me
just now to read what I had originally
written because I'm actually way more
happy with how the lyrics turned out.
But this was
the seed for Jawline.
Shaded and warm.
Come in.
Take me
back up.
Take the river back in.
Thank you so much for listening to Inhabiting Words with me,
Sandrayati.
Join us next time for episode three,
which will be Arise in the third wave.
Bye for now.
Hope you're well.