“Through the Blue” feels apt for this moment. The sixth song on SLEEPWALKER, I wrote this shortly after I lost the first version of this album – the one I’d been making on my own for the year before my computer, hard drives, and all the notes I had about the record were stolen in one fell swoop. That was pretty devastating. I wrote this on the floor of the tiny house while considering the sadness and ache around that theft, and also around that general period of time, mourning the end of my twenties and very much in my Saturn Return. It was staggering to notice how weary I was and thus, how much less prepared I felt to tackle the upswing.
I can see now how that experience was its own gift, as losing anything or anyone we love often is. Derek Walcott writes that grief will always “lift a mirror up to where you are bravely working.” It led me to the iteration of SLEEPWALKER that was meant to be heard in this moment, with these collaborators attached to its making. I know intimately what I lost, but I know what I found, too. This has been my experience in so many of my life’s hardest and most enriching lessons.
Produced by Justin Glasco. Played by myself, Kiel Feher, and Erik Kertes. Ryan Lipman mixed this tune and Hans DeKline mastered it.
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