Treats, Trauma, and Trust – Overview

My newest EP is a small collection of piano pieces which have been composed over several years. The “treats” are the ear candy—beautiful, pleasing pieces that are fun and relatively easy to play. The “trauma” is the middle two tracks that were born from "trauma responses"—that is, my own musical response to reading books about trauma. The “trust” refers to the improvisational nature of four of the tracks: to record an improvisation is something I have done for many years but had never officially released until now. It takes a great deal of trust in oneself to hit record and play your instrument, making it up as you go. And I’m so happy with how they all turned out.

Originally, I was going to title this EP “A Basket of…” and for a few weeks I mulled over what exactly would be in this basket! As I got a clearer idea of the pieces that I would include in the EP, I figured “treats” would be a cute word to use, and a nice thing to put into the basket. At some point, I realized that I could put both of the “trauma response” pieces in the EP as well, and that “trauma” was alliterative with “treats”.

I thought maybe “therapy” could be the last word, the last thing in the basket, but that seemed a bit too… On the nose. Not poetic. The word “trust” came to me eventually, and it worked beautifully with what I mentioned earlier about needing to trust yourself when you’re improvising.

I was telling a good friend of mine, who also happens to be an artist, about the idea for this basket full of treats and trauma, and we started brainstorming what the cover image could be. I knew I wanted to get a basket, and put in some cute things. She suggested plushies, and I added in candy and flowers. I thought of tearing up some paper, or crushing the candies. Then my friend suggested knives, scissors… I was taken aback at first, but then thought wow, of course! I needed to have some visual representation of trauma, nothing horrific, but startling or unsettling could be cool.

And then I thought of FIRE. Over the course of my healing journey in the last six years, I have done so much writing and BURNING. It has been an integral part of my transformation. I find it immensely cathartic to write down various things on paper (from negative thoughts about myself and others, to entire letters to people I still held resentment toward), and then BURN IT ALL!!! Not to mention, a lot of my own birthday parties as a child were low-key traumatic, and so the inclusion of burning birthday candles ON the basket seemed so perfect.

My boyfriend suggested I take out "A Basket of" and just call it "Treats, Trauma, and Trust". I agreed that the shorter title was more suitable, and to the point.

I just ran with this idea of juxtaposing treats and trauma. We have my two favorite stuffed animal birds, some blue roses for my late mother, little decorative flowers, nostalgic candies (Pocky and Skittles), chocolate-covered almonds, and a small pocket journal. And then, inside the basket with my bird friends are scissors, three knives pointing upward, and birthday candles, two of which are lit. I also lit a page of the journal, burned a few of the decorative flowers, and crushed or broke some of the candies.

My lovely boyfriend helped me take all of the pictures, and I used the Canva app to edit them. I incorporated the “Belvedere” filter, and I really love the super dark magenta border in all the photos, including the cover image.