Prompt 3: What are you Made of?
“to make” is a splinter of inherited trauma pulled directly from my body. For each of us, there's that wedge of anguish that just won't let the door close. And then, there's the anger because we didn't even open that door. The wall of sound production under the line "you tell me you want to die" was this breakthrough moment for me where we really captured that feeling—the suffering, the empathy, the rage.
Prompt: Choose a family story. Tell it from the perspective of one of your ancestors or a living elder. Now, tell the same story as you experienced it, or, if you weren’t there, as it influenced you when you learned it.
Prompt 2: What Has Burned Away?
I'm burning explores power—the people who hold it, the way they wield it against one another and against themselves. It is a song about becoming through struggle.
The music I’ve been working on over the past year, including these last two singles, has pushed me harder than anything I’ve ever made. With that pressure, I’ve discovered the brittle points in my creativity, in my community, and in my leadership. Some things broke apart. At times, I longed for things to stay as they were, but that’s not how being human works. As I begin releasing this music, as the old falls away, I hope I can enjoy what’s coming. I hope this is a cleansing fire, and it leads me into my own power.
Prompt: Write a eulogy for your past self. Who were you? What did you accomplish? What joy and sorrow did you carry? Be gentle. Be kind. Consider what you will miss now that you are someone new.
Prompt 1: Who Could You Be?
When I wrote hot enough, I set out to capture the feeling of internalized misogyny. It increases in tempo dramatically from the beginning to the end. Even now, that makes my adrenaline spike every time I hear it.
Once I had that concept, I kept collecting images from my own childhood and adolescence as well as the stories of friends and family. One day, sitting in traffic, I just had most of the lyric. Writing it helped me look a lot of memories in the eye. It externalized something truly disgusting and disfigured that I had taken into myself. That was purifying—like fire.
Prompt: Split your page in two halves from top to bottom (hot dog style). On the left, make a list of images, moments, and interactions that taught you something you wish you hadn’t learned.
On the right, make a list of what you might have believed had the poison of those ideas never seeped in. Who would you be? Who could you be still?