The Divine Comedy Begins...

I spent the last sixteen months processing my own life through the making of this album…in real time. Which sounds poetic. In practice, it mostly looked like me crying a lot, and neurotically re-writing the same songs over and over again. 

There was a version of this album that was finished in June. And it was…cute! It was a lot like my last few: safe. Every song was it's own little capsule, able to stand on its own, with nothing too weird or off-putting for anyone jumping in.

But when I sat with that June version, it felt disingenuous.

While I was writing all of this music, I was going through a really hard time (that isn't unusual for me lol I'm sensitive). Artists tend to make a lot when they're deep in their feels, and this collection was no exception. But the June version had softened alllll of it.

I'm known for being someone who seeks answers. And sometimes, to my own detriment, I think I'm pretty wise! But you know what they say: the more you know, the more you realize how little you actually know.

While I was writing these songs, I'd convinced myself I had already learned the lessons from the situations that inspired them. I was sure I had already come out the wiser. Sure, I'd made mistakes, but everyone who wronged me had somehow handed me an imaginary crown. I was going to come out better than all of them, because I didn't need them, and I knew something they didn't.

The ending of Outwitting the Stars 1.0 was a watered-down version of exactly that: I'm so much better off without you. The end.

But I knew it wasn't true. I was writing an album about what I was trying to convince myself of: that I was better, and everyone else was wrong. And the harder I tried to convince myself, the clearer it got that it was a story I was telling myself, not where I actually was.

Here's what was actually going on: I was basically flat broke. I'd lost a business I'd poured a year of blood, sweat and tears into, one I'd hoped would be my future. I had stepped away from several circles of people who truly had mistreated me. That was the right call, but it left me sitting alone in my studio most nights. I wasn't invited to the parties or the festivals anymore. I was on the outside of circles I used to be part of.

(cue the 2022 déjà vu - IYKYK)

Then over the spring/summer, I moved and had to break down my studio. Then I got sick for like, 6 weeks. All of my sound healing instruments got stolen out of my car. Then came the last straw….my beloved mixing & mastering engineer told me he needed to step away from the album. That one broke me, because music is always the one thing I feel I have left when everything else is gone.

That's why the June version couldn't be the finished one. I still had my own chewing to do. Externally, everything was settled. There were no more conversations to have, no more legal back-and-forth, no invitations I was hoping to receive. The doors were pad-locked.

But I hadn't really understood the bigger lesson yet. Because of course there always has to be a lesson?!!

I. Let My Devil Play With Yours

The album opens a little snarky and a little polished, and track one is there to explain that foolishness.

I felt provoked, by A LOT of things at once. It felt like my passive nature was being taken advantage of, as always. A group of people I genuinely loved called me evil. When it came to someone else's romantic feelings toward my own partner, I was told by them that I "just didn't understand," and that it was something I would simply have to deal with. Projects I had been the visionary of were ripped away from me, along with my dignity. 

I was hurt, and I was angry. I was backed into a corner. And I'll stand my ground on this: I was provoked.

So Let My Devil Play With Yours is me accepting the invitation to play.

White moves first, but two can play. I'll play the darkness you deemed me anyway.

So, the descent begins. The crown I put on in this song is a costume. I didn't know that yet when I wrote it, but I do now. The real one comes much later, and it costs a lot more.

The Divine Comedy Begins is the first five songs of that journey: the bravado & the bite, and the late-night-lonely girl in the studio...trying to convince herself she had won. The song ends on the line that gave the EP its name, and that's exactly what it is. A beginning, and the entrance to the long journey down.

The divine comedy continues :) 11.2.26

-cc