I just got so sleepy.
Okay. "Behind The Songs."
What are we on? Souvenirs!
So, I wrote this song about one year after I got back from Jakarta.
That was a super weird year. When you are trapped somewhere for a
100 days and the only thing you're ever wishing for is to go home,
you kind of think that when it finally happens that the rest of life
is just going to be like skipping through fields and feeling grateful
and happy forever. And what happened was the opposite.
I came home and it felt so good and we cried and everyone was hugging
and then life set in, and I was like... whoa. I don't know who I am.
I fell into a bit of a depression, and I was really shaken because
when I was in Jakarta things became so clear about what was important.
It was just being alive and showing people that you love them and that's it.
And then coming back, I was like wait...
We're all spending our lives mostly doing stuff that's NOT that,
and worrying about stuff that's not that,
and what is career and what is any of this stuff?
And I was so confused and part of me felt like
I don't know if I'll ever do music again.
I felt really unsettling.
I just wanted to hug people I loved and that be my life
for the rest of time.
So I had a really difficult year of trying to kind of put the pieces
back together. And I did a LOT of different types of therapy
and just worked on myself a lot
and I finally started to get to an okay place,
and then I was doing a writing retreat day with my drummer Darla
who was also in Jakarta with us. She was writing upstairs
I was writing downstairs, and she had asked me,
"Do you think you'll ever write about Jakarta again?"
And I was like, "Eh, I don't know that I have anything left to say."
Which is silly. And she was like,
"Maybe there's more?" And I was like "Yeah, maybe."
And then I sat down at the piano and this song--
"Souvenirs" kind of poured out.
The first thing about this music video is that it's flipping
between "Jakarta" and my home.
and "Jakarta"--MY experience of Jakarta--is inside a hotel room
because that's where I spent 99% of my time there.
I really really wanted it to feel correct, and Jesse and I spent
an entire day looking up pictures of hotel rooms in Los Angeles
trying to find one that felt like our home in Jakarta.
And so we searched and searched and searched and then I finally found
one that was pretty close--the color scheme was right,
the placement of the bed and the window was right.
We even moved stuff around in the hotel room to be as close
as it could to ours, except it's the mirror image.
What I wanted to do for this video was just recreate my life there.
So everything you see me doing in this video--it's exactly what I did.
So the outfit that I'm wearing is the outfit that I lived in.
The mug that the video starts on that has Indonesia and then
a plane flying over the ocean and then California
and it says how many miles is between these two places--
it was actually a gift given to me the night of that show
before all of this went down.
Which is so weird--one of the only gifts I got that night
was a mug that told me how far away I was from home.
And I did love it and I still use it now.
Someone, also at the show, they gave me a journal.
So I did all this gratitude journaling in this journal that someone
gave me at the show--and just real journaling about my time there.
That was not actually my original journal.
I found another that looked like it and then I copied it out actual
pages from my diary when I was in Jakarta.
The crocheting! Darla and I--again, my drummer--
who's like my Jakarta sister, at one point we were like--
we should learn how to crochet granny squares. And I had this idea
that I would make this blanket. And so we spent all our time,
like we'd be at dinner crocheting, when we're with the band
we're crocheting, when I'm really depressed I'm crocheting,
and then, 100 days in, we get word we're going home.
I never finished the blanket.
I tied them up in this little bag and then I put them away
and I never looked at them again.
And so when I shot this video, it was the first time I actually brought
out all of these squares that I had been working on the whole time
I was in Jakarta, and it was the first time I'd crocheted since.
I finished the last square!
I didn't even finish the last square I was working on, which is so weird.
So it felt like this nice closure to get to finish the final granny square.
I still haven't made it a blanket, but, that's okay.
The video is also a lot about the weird, weird transition coming home.
There's a part in the video where it flickers in between me being at
home and me being in Jakarta.
The whole time I was in Jakarta I was thinking about home
and then I get home and I just kept thinking about Jakarta.
It was like this weird, alt universe,
and I was always going between them.
This is really the whole point of the song. All of the hardest things,
like the saddest memories, and the most difficult conversations
or moments--those feel like gifts to me now--
they're like badges of something.
They're the moments where I learned the most,
they're moments that I felt the most. Things were important.
And I'm grateful that I got to feel so deeply. And now, being
this far out from Jakarta, I am only grateful for the experience
and it's all like a souvenir to me.
It's all like this special gift that taught me so much and that I do
have a lot of oddly warm memories of.
Of course, I have all the terrifying memories, too.
Seeing how much community meant, or how much family meant,
how much friendship meant, strengthening my relationship with Jesse,
So, so many, so many souvenirs coming out of this really
really hard thing. And I try to look at all of life like this now.
When a really hard thing is happening,
I'm pretty sure something really beautiful is going to come out of it.
Somehow, someday, I will look back and be like
thank goodness that happened because blah, blah, blah.
That's not true.
I'm never going to be like--thank goodness someone died.
But, even in the hardest things there is beauty to be found
and lessons to be found, and I think that's kind of
what this is about--to stay open to that stuff,
so that the bad stuff isn't JUST bad.
That's "Souvenirs" you guys!
There's only one left and then we will have completed
the Behind The Songs series for In The Waiting!
Thank you guys for coming along on this journey with me.
I hope you are very well.
I'm sending so much love and I'll see you soon.
Okay, bye.