Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
So the album spans 15 years of live performance. And my friend Keith
Richardson followed me to gigs for 15 years--not all of them--but captured a
real history there and we decided last year -- he had the patience to go through
hundreds of hours of recordings and to choose 32 songs and a few poems that
would tell the story of those years before diagnosis with bipolar one
disorder and after diagnosis. So the first album is all about that really,
that wilderness that I was moving through where my internal world was very
puzzling to me and the music was a way to access that and express it before it
was consciously crossing my mind, which is fascinating. When I listened back I
think, oh my gosh, get this girl some help! You know, I knew what was happening on a
deep level but was not seeking help and the breaking point in 2006 was, you know,
it's a breakdown but I always refer to it as a breakthrough. It was a moment
where my life really fell apart. But the songs on the other side were just real
songs of healing and finding that stillness and finding that peace in my
own mind. And so the second the second disc in that collection is called After
and it really shows that those early years of fear and kind of -- there was a
sense of living in the shadow of an active volcano. You know, I had this
feeling of, I don't know if the illness is going to get that bad again. And then
as the meditation practice started and the yoga practice and I responded well
to medication, then those years started to get easier and so the final songs on
that After disc really celebrate a point of deep peace and for me the sense
that you can heal in the midst of these illnesses. It's not recovering. I have the
genes. I'm always going to be working with the biology.
But to heal in the midst of managing a mood disorder has been the big blessing
and ongoing process and project of the last decade.