Love Letters to Myself - Weightless

This is undoubtedly the most raw and vulnerable track on the album. It's my song about unburdening myself of others' expectations, especially unspoken ones, particularly from my childhood and adolescence.

The melodica was a later addition—after I took the cover photo with it, I decided it would be fun to put it into a song or two! There were a couple parts that turned out kind of strange but I liked it and kept it! At 2:26 you can barely hear the attack, and then from 2:30-2:33 you can actually hear my heart beat through the melodica...!!!

The melodica is nice and I love it, but it does seem to represent this shadow of myself, the version of me that would cower in fear and suppress myself unconsciously when I was younger. It plays its last note at 3:23, never to be heard again!!

One of my favorite aspects of the songs on this album is that none of them strictly follow a typical pop song structure (like I wrote about at the end of the first post from my first album). For "Weightless", there are three sung verses at the beginning with piano in between, then the piano takes the spotlight for most of the remainder of the song. The vocals come back and sing the main melody a few times.

One key moment in the lyrics really speaks about my younger self—particularly before I woke up five years ago, and about my first album: "I had not yet found my own voice / Sang purely through my fingertips"

I have always loved to sing, even idolizing singers and musicians who were brave enough to use their voices. My first album was entirely solo piano pieces, and while I did temporarily have recordings of me singing uploaded too, I embarrassingly recorded the vocals and piano with the same mic at the same time, because I was still afraid to let my voice truly be heard. I took those recordings down and don't plan on putting them up again.

In a way, my mother's death was indirectly what finally encouraged me to embrace my voice. Not in a necessarily painful way, or with any kind of pressure or resistance, but more like I found this strength in myself that I wish I could have shown her. I was just becoming more comfortable with my singing before she passed, and I can remember her praising the strength in my voice just a few weeks before we found out she was sick—and she herself subsequently lost her strength...

While she lay unconscious in the hospital, I had wanted to sing for her, but I also just felt so shy, timid, and scared. I know logically that my singing wouldn't have been able to save her, but in a way I sing now for her... How I wish she could've heard me... How she will never be able to hear me... How I want to inspire my own future children, especially when I am gone, too.

While composing "Weightless", I began to painstakingly notate each and every note I was playing, trying to get it "perfect". I was really dragging my heels in finalizing and notating the piano parts after the third verse. I realized that although this song was supposedly about me unburdening myself from my perceptions of others' expectations, there was a part of me that really didn't want to let go. I kept myself trapped in this idea of perfection and performance that were so closely tied to my feelings of worthiness.

I finally decided to let go. I stopped notating the piece, and while I did practice it many times, the piano part from 3:30 onward is mostly improvised. I let it be okay to not have it all "perfect"—I am also trying to let go of this idea that in order for a piece to be "perfect", it needs to be fully notated. Since my undergraduate degree is in music composition, I felt so much pressure for so many years to notate each and every piece I composed, or else it "wouldn't count". While notating can be super satisfying and fulfilling, I choose for it not to be the be-all, end-all of my music composition.

—

I was held down

Carried so much

I took it all on as my own

All the guilt and shame

Can weigh me down

Unspoken rules of a game

I never signed up to play

I had not yet

Found my own voice

Sang purely through fingertips

Lies they told me...

All those stories I didn't know I could refuse

Now what is real?

And what is mine?

I chose to be free

Don't wanna carry

These problems that were never mine

Dig deeper

Beyond the lies

Beyond the stories I told myself for so long

Now who am I?

Oh, who am I?

Burdens of her shadowy past, lifted

Feelings are not meant to last—fleeting

Rise up and gently fall

With grace

Tethered down to nothing at all

Weightless

It's okay to stumble and fall

Rise again

Weightless.