Hi :)

Today is the 2nd birthday of my 2nd album Leaving.

I wrote a long-winded reflection on it for its first birthday that I never shared.. and so much has changed and grown and shifted that I’ve moved on from it. I’m glad I wrote it for myself though………

A summary: Leaving was a difficult album to make and to release. It held the weight of a lot of disillusionment and grief I was feeling at the time about the pandemic and climate change. My first album’s life was snuffed out by quarantine and it forced me to zoom out and consider why I make music and how I wanted to grapple with the grief and anxiety of living in a world that moves too quickly for its own good.

The cover image is a picture of an unwieldy campfire, an image I worried would be trite, but I think it fit well. Fire was a central metaphor in the album: a force that humans have harnessed to create and destroy, how quickly it spreads, how difficult it is to control. Wildfires were raging in the Northwest during that time (or Canada? California? everywhere) and it felt biblical. The song “Palm Trees” deals with it directly:

“Today is alright but I’ll bring it in tomorrow when a cold front approaches and threatens the plants

If the answer is yes then I’ll call you in August when the palm trees ignite through a smudge in the glass”

Now we are seeing parts of LA taken by wildfires and the loss feels palpable as our friends and favorite artists lose their homes, their belongings, and their communities. It is devastating and unfair. Here is a place you can donate to help these people recover.

I’m learning over and over again that life is a series of lettings go. I struggled to release Leaving because I knew I couldn’t control how it would exist in the world. Two years later I have found how much freedom there is in not having control, the possibilities that lie within and beyond grief and loss. But it sucks so much, and takes so much time (our whole lives maybe), which is why we need help: friends, family, music, movies, reminders of the strange beauty (horrible beauty) of being alive. One I would recommend is “The Last Showgirl” which to me was a meditation on trying to figure out what to hold on to and what to let go of, and how humiliating and exhilarating that struggle can be.

Today is Inauguration Day and I think many of us are feeling that grief and helplessness - so I hope everyone is ok and being gentle and maybe letting go of a few things to lighten the load.

Email me <3

-Maria