Okay, today we're diving into "Birdsong," which is such a special song to me.
This song actually came to me in a very different way than normal.
I was on a walk in my neighborhood
and I saw these birds flying in the sky
it was like a raven and then like a tiny little starling or something,
They were flying around together,
and then I was like, maybe I'll just try singing about these birds...
To be honest, the first part was probably really stupid and bad,
probably about crows talking to each other--THAT is not what the song is about
but I was singing, and then starting singing the part--which part was it--
"tell me, tell me what you see"
and then I heard--in my head--piano,
which, if you know the song, you know is not an impressive feat
because the piano I heard was basically two notes.
It was just--
and I was like oh gosh, I have to get home.
So I went home and I sat down at the piano
and then the normal thing happened--where the song just started coming out of me
And so when I was writing it, what I was pulling on, some of you know,
I have rescued several baby birds in my life.
It's all been incredibly magical and incredibly emotional.
While I called on the feelings of all the little birds I had,
there was one in particular that wrecked me the hardest.
Jesse and I, and a big group of people, we were on this river rafting trip down the Grand Canyon.
And every day we would raft down the river
and then do some camping along the sides of the bottom of the Grand Canyon,
it was crazy.
And one day they found this little bird in the river.
It's an ice-cold river!
It probably was trying to learn how to fly.
They pulled it out, we got it warm, and then I was trying to feed it
and it was so magical.
We named it Clancy.
If I put it down in the sand a few feet in front of me
it would just slowly walk its way back to me
and then start crawling up me and then just nuzzle in my neck.
And then I started teaching it out to fly--
I was not trained in this, and I'm sorry if I'm breaking all the birds--
I have them on my hand--I'm doing this little lowering motion
and when they feel the drop they start to flap their wings,
and they get stronger and stronger
and then they start to, you know, go off your finger
and they'll just kind of go diagonally to the ground while flapping
And then that gets further and further as their wings get stronger.
We had a lunch break on the side of the river one day
and I was doing this practice with it, pretty far from the river,
and we're doing it and it's going like 5 feet, 6 feet, and then...
it takes off in the direction of the river,
so, so long before I'm confident this bird knew how to fly,
and just heads towards the river.
The river is so far across. There were rapids--it's crazy.
So I'm chasing it, and I run out into the river as deep as I can go
and the bird's going out over the river, and then I can't see it anymore.
And I don't know if it kept flying, or if it fell into the river and drowned.
But I lost it in a way--I have maybe never lost it quite like this.
I was here with this group of 20 people who were all kind of watching this scene
They've been watching me care for this bird, and then they watch the bird
fly inches over the river and me running after it.
I couldn't face everyone.
In my mind, at that moment, I was basically like
I killed this bird that I love so much.
I shouldn't have let it fly, I should have been further from the river,
I should have pointed it in another direction
and I had no idea if it'd be okay.
I just stood there just bawling.
This went for like an hour.
It was such a deep deep ache.
This is a side thing--
there was a woman on our rafting trip whose name was Rain
and she was older and she came alone and she was beautiful and so wise
Jesse was talking to her and she was like, you know, I've been watching Kina
and it's so sweet how she is with this bird, and I see she's so devastated.
She was like, you know, the thing is with parenting,
we're all going to make mistakes, and bad things might happen,
but if we were doing it with love, from a place of love,
that's all you can ask of yourself.
Which was really sweet and was helpful to me.
Sometimes you use a device to help you write a song.
So in this case, it was my bird Clancy,
or in the case of "Winter"-- a song off Elements--my tool was this vase of dead flowers,
which helped me pull out a song that was about loss.
Jesse came home and I was like, "I wrote a song!" and I played it for him,
and in my mind I was like-- oh, it's about birds...
and then, I'm singing the song
and I just started crying, and it hit me in that moment,
again--I've said this before--I think songs are for everyone
and every meaning that they need them to be,
and I don't usually think through all the different meanings that can be for people
but in this instant I had a huge one hit me
One of the things this song is for
is for all of the people who have lost children or babies very very early on.
whether it was a miscarriage, or losing them when they were so tiny and so young.
Which is, I cannot imagine how devastating.
And I was like, oh my gosh, I think this feels like with the song is about to me.
This tiny fragile thing coming into your life and then being gone
before you could have ever possibly been ready.
And the really crazy thing is, I've heard from so many women who have been through that
and then listened to "Birdsong" and it connected to that part of them.
And you guys are so strong and amazing.
These messages were really really beautiful and so inspiring.
Just really incredibly powerful and meaningful.
If you listen carefully, there are probably birds in every single song
off of "In The Waiting" because we live kind of surrounded by trees
and there are so many birds, and our studio is not soundproofed at all.
And so there birds in the background of all of my songs pretty much
if you're listening hard enough.
But for this one, instead of trying to hide it
I actually just sat in the studio and I opened the door
and I just pressed record for like 3 minutes, and I just let the birds be recorded
and it felt really right.
Thank you for going on that journey with me.
It means so much to me to get to share a little bit more.
Thank you guys for watching.
As always, if you don't know "Birdsong"
you can go listen to it on Spotify or iTunes or all of the places
and I hope that you enjoy it.
Okay, but thank you guys so much and I will see you later!
Bye.