The time I wrote the songs for ‘She Was In Trouble’ was a promising time for me. Big changes were going on in my life. I had finally finished high school after 7 dreadful years, fell in love with what (still!) seems to be the nicest guy and I was about to embark on a 2-month journey across Thailand and New Zealand. As you can imagine, it was pretty difficult to leave a new love behind for what seemed to be the longest time. Together, we were living up to the moment I would leave the country. The feeling of ‘going away’ and ‘leaving my old life behind’ of course resulted in a lot of songs.
So there’s ‘First Night of April’. I start the song off with a random sentence that was stuck wandering around in my mind all day. I had this melody in my head but couldn’t find a way to start the song off, so it eventually ended up like this: “I’m floating in a vine and finding just the thing to rhyme…”. Then, for some reason, it all came to me.
A month before I wrote the song, on the actual first night of April, I went to a goodbye party of a friend of mine. He was also leaving the Netherlands to travel to China by foot. He had been preparing for his journey for a pretty long time and it was a highly anticipated party. There were over a hundred people there I think. A location was rented, friends and family were there, there was a huge bonfire - it was the real deal. During that party lots of stories were told. Nearing the end of the party, I was pretty stoned. So I didn’t quite recollect every detail of the party, but I remembered this story about a guy who lived in the village we were in at the time, who climbed some sort of tower just because he wanted to. For some reason that really stuck with me. There was also a story about people… on hills… I didn’t quite remember everything, but those were the things that I remembered. Anyways, while I was writing the song, I quickly wrote down this sentence before I had to head off to work: “I’m heading off to work, so never ask me: why do I fail to ever see beyond the measures that were taken when I decided to climb up a hill on the first night of April?” It’s a pretty crazy sentence and I’m not even sure what it means, but I just imagined that the halfly-recollected memories of the stories told were something like this.
The chorus is simple: “Why would you think I would never do that? Cus I’m doing it now.” I liked to think that I had grown a lot and did a lot of things that I wouldn’t do before. I felt a lot more free and mentally stable, so it felt like a small summary of how I felt at that time. People around me sometimes didn’t expect that I was finally doing well. For real now, you know. Anyways, the second verse is just chaos in my brain that I could best put to use in a song. Actually, most of my lyric-writing goes like that. I never know where to place my thoughts, I can’t really ‘hear’ myself thinking because everything goes too fast. The only times I really know where to put them is when I’m writing. I guess it explains why I feel more comfortable explaining stuff through writing than through words. Some friends of mine could probably confirm that I’m hard to follow sometimes when I try to explain something to them. At least, a couple of years ago that was the case. I believe I’m better at talking now. Maybe singing helped me with that. Maybe the fact that I’m much more calm than I was before helps too. But my mind is still a mystery to me. It’s pretty nice that it comes out easily whenever I write. It’s why I like diaries so much. I don’t really keep up with any diaries though, so I’m not really one to talk, but whenever I’m travelling I basically need to keep a diary. It’s awesome to be alone somewhere, far away, and just speak my mind and heart out through a diary that no one is ever going to read. A lot of lyrics come from my travels. It’s when I’m just kind of stuck with myself and my brain for a while in an uncomfortable, scary yet exciting situation that makes my songwriting really take off. I have to, I think. It’s to cope with shit maybe. Lyrically that’s the case - musically not so much. I just really like playing the guitar and writing songs on it. Anyways, whenever I write down my thoughts in the form of lyrics, I have to be honest: I have not a single clue what the fuck I’m talking about. I usually find out later, when the song is long recorded, what it means to me and what I’m trying to say with it. I sometimes just have to go back to the lyrics, read them a couple of times and think about it before I really find out what it’s about. When you’re in a stressful situation you do (-in this case, write) things before you think about it. Instinct, maybe. Wow, maybe that’s where my lyrics come from! What a weird place. Or maybe I’m just not that good at writing lyrics and it’s all just bullshit because I need to fill up the melody with words. It could honestly be the case. Who knows. It would be an exciting moment when I find out what it’s all about. But that’s stuff to dream of.
The last verse is actually about my disorder. I’m diagnosed with misophonia, it’s pretty real shit. It has messed with me all my life, from when I was 6 to this day still. It has greatly influenced me in everything I do. I don’t really speak about the fact that this is a part of me often. In fact, only my friends really know, and of course all the high schools I went to knew because it impacted my school life a lot. Misophonia is a disorder that basically means you ‘hate sound’, pretty ironic for someone who wants to be a musician you might think, but it’s pretty specific. There are a couple of sounds that are amplified in my head and whenever I hear them, I get adrenaline rushes and a very intense fight or flight response. Sounds like chewing, certain ticks, other mouth movements that make sounds, little ‘smacks’ that people sometimes have during talking and some other stuff. Stuff that other people may find ‘annoying’ too, but it’s really not just that. It’s very difficult for me and I really can’t help it. Because of this disorder, I got kicked out of one of the schools I went to. They didn’t want me to come back to class (I was 14 or 15 I think) because I was too difficult, too intense. It’s why it took me 7 years to finish high school. I switched schools 4 times, every time was a difficult time. I didn’t really mean to write about this disorder as much as I’m doing now, but now that I’m doing it anyways, I want to get it off my chest. People suffering from misophonia are the subject of mockery oftentimes. I rarely get taken seriously. Usually one of the first responses when I tell people about this is: “oh, my sister has the same!” or “oh, I think I have that too, then!”. Of course I don’t want to discredit them, but it’s really quite something else, I feel. Yes, a lot of people find those sounds triggering and annoying, sure. But this has been extremely difficult to live with for me. Up until maybe the last 2-3 years in my life (since I’m doing significantly better), I hadn’t been able to celebrate Christmas, Easter, birthdays, ever. Never had dinner with my family. I’m still not able to go places without my headphones on. I got kicked out of school and was the subject of experiments because misophonia wasn’t an official diagnosis when I was younger. It became one when I was 15. Before that, psychiatrists have experimented on me with different kinds of medicine (antidepressants which made me very depressed, antipsychotics, benzos. Real drugs, they are. Higher doses if it didn’t work. No fun to spend your week in bed halfly paralysed or passed out.) and I’ve had a fair share of diagnoses that eventually turned out to be tied to misophonia. When the first treatment for misophonia was developed in Amsterdam, I was in the first group to get the treatment (it’s therapy, by the way, no medicine). They also tested my cognitive abilities and I got those brain stickers on my head to run some tests. I’m happy to have been part of the research and the first therapy group, if that means that they now know how to treat people with misophonia better. Unfortunately it didn’t work for me, so the torment went on. Today is different though. I mean like, this time and age. I’m able to have dinner with people now, as long as there’s music on. Pretty loudly, too. If that’s not possible, I just ‘close’ one ear off with my hand and eat with the other hand. Switch sometimes if the sound moves. Eating with my right hand is really difficult though, but I got used to it. I can be on trains and buses if I have my headphones. If I don’t have them, I miss my train and buy new ones or go back home to fetch them. The fact that people have to wear masks in trains now is quite convenient for me because people now more often decide not to eat in trains. Calms me down a bit - because not only the sound of the eating and of the package but also the sight of people getting food and eating it triggers the intense reaction… Ehm…. I’m sorry that this became a rant and/or a personal therapy session. But it’s all open books now I think. I don’t mind. I just really want people who actually suffer from misophonia to be understood. It’s not an annoyance. It’s a disorder that impacts life a LOT.
I’m now rethinking my entire blog-thing. Has it become too personal? This is my music-website, you know, it’s not really meant for this kind of stuff. I don’t know, maybe it is. It’s still my website and I decide what to do with it, but still. I’d like to keep it professional, but at the same time, it might be charming if people really get to know me. Become a real person who also makes music, not an image of a person. An illusion of a cool guitar-girl who has her shit together and makes music. The fact that I’m putting all these thoughts to paper probably means I’m already at the point of no return.
Intense writing session for sure - I’m going to put this aside and think about it for a few days.
So anyway! First night of april!
I suppose this means that all the music I make is actually very personal and a deep-dive into my brain, even though the lyrics might not seem like it. It’s not literally: “Oooh my life sucked and I cried, misophoniaaa” but it’s just my raw material, the shit in my mind that I have to work with on a daily basis.
I’m sure that this must have given some insight. Are you better for it? Am I better for it? Probably not. It doesn’t matter. I’m happy I shared this.
