This is simply a record of life lived and time passed. 2020 filled so quickly with heartbreak, with rage, with grief, fear and longing. Fires real and personal burned unchecked. Yet I have also seen so much real joy, relief, love, and freedom. And these are not mutually exclusive experiences. Each is not discrete. They are all braided and intertwined - love coexisting with grief, gratitude woven with fear. The hazy, swirling moments of this year do not fit together logically or linearly. The seams have been ripped out and sewn again too many times.

These songs are pages torn from my journals and strewn upon the floor. They tell the story of a year in all its contradictions. There is no throughline other than that they arose in a time and a place from the voice and hands of one body. We sift through life searching for a narrative to make sense of all of the days - and usually it works. But there are times when the fit is impossible, and that's that. Irreconcilable truths are still truths.

These songs are rough-hewn and raw, but my goal in writing them was to crystallize moments in their jagged imperfection rather than massaging them into a polished form that makes "sense". Think of them as demos, if you want - many are one takes, a few are just a handheld recorder sat in front of me and my guitar in a room. I debated fleshing these songs out further, sending them off to friends for overdubs, editing until they were "just right". But this feels like the most honest and genuine way of presenting these moments. Over time memories become worn at the edges like wave-turned stones on the lakeshore, but captured in the moment of waking they are sharp and cut like glass. If I take anything away from 2020 it's that there is no such thing as "just right" - the world keeps turning even as humanity careens off the rails.

I hope you enjoy these portraits of a year, taking care not to slice a fingertip as you turn them over in the sunlight.

xoxo
C