I partnered with the brilliant Cortney Armitage on a photo series that represents Joy using the color bombs of Holi. Each of the women in the series gave their definition of Joy - and they were all equally as insightful and relatable. Check them out below!
"Joy to me is a deep sense of inter-connectedness, losing sense of time and space - but fully engaged in the moment."
Kristine Pregot - @kristinequeen
"There’s something about Joy, in comparison to the other breeds of happiness, that’s more immediate. The downside is that it’s more fleeting, but there some part of it that’s serendipitous and unexpected and keeps you on your feet because you never know when it’s going to turn an ordinary or terrible day around. It’s ancillary. It’s not necessary. It’s specific to you and it’s outside of the general things that make everyone happy like puppies and coupons. After you’ve taken care of your basic needs and let yourself be affected by pleasantries, what’s the one thing that brings you a feeling you didn’t realize you were missing? For me, it’s always been performing. I feel elevated. High. I can tangibly feel it (though, that might be the blazing, overbearing stage lights giving me a low-grade fever.) I think happiness is something you possess after getting your material items in order and taking care of yourself and doing all the things you need to do to live. Joy is the shit you live for."
Brittany Brave @brittanythebrave
"Harmony and balance in life brings me joy. Thinking about my friends and family and sharing laughs with them. And I love life's surprises!"
Eliis Keidong - @ellie_keidong
"As a free spirit, my joy is feeling lost. Lost in my thoughts, lost in music and dance, lost in nature or the city...My mother always said I was a daydreamer...and feeling lost makes room for more of my dreams..."
Camile Sardina - @camilesardina
"Basically, anything that has the elements of "silliness, sea, surf & friends" in it is Joy for me."
Katrin Haibi (She is a free spirit and has no instagram tag)
"For me, joy means an understanding that not everything may work out, but we should celebrate the little things as they do.
I think it's deeply entwined with hope, which requires that we embrace that few things are guaranteed but we can dare to love them anyway. "
Megan McCormick - @megwethersfield
As we discuss Change this month, I can’t help but think of how much in my life has changed since starting this project! In the last year I’ve officially released the below 9 songs with Raw Emotions (and many more on here - The Vault). Pushing myself to make music that is raw, real and represent me on a deep level has changed me. It has helped me trust myself in ways I never have, brought out lyrics I would never have had the courage to write and sing and has pushed productions to places I love in ways I didn’t know I could love music.
Happiness. I thought a lot about what song to share that's connected to Happiness. This song ALWAYS makes me feel good. It's not about the content, or the words really, it's just about the vibe. Play it loud, it works best that way :)
I wrote Brooklyn In The Summer after 4 days in the desert with friends developing my creative practice that I call “The Dig.” Digs are 10 min vocal and lyric improvisations designed to bring up subconscious ideas and emotions that I don’t want to face, but are the most important to deal with. I had a session with my friend Jake Scott and After we did a couple digs and came back from a walk I sat down at a Piano and Brooklyn just came out. Jake walked in the room as the chorus started to form and we finished it together in about 30 minutes. It was magic. Here is the original demo from that day :)
“Breath”
12”x10”x5”
Black Indian Soapstone
"For this collaborative project, I wanted to capture something that was universally felt by all people, regardless of age, gender, race, ethnicity or religion. Angst is shared among us all and in order to manage the dread and anxiety, we have to accept and ultimately breathe. When Jay and I spoke in more depth about our work on this project, I realized that the focus was not on the struggle of life, but rather how we deal with it. The breath offers that to us all. To breathe is to sustain life."
Dan Saland was born/raised in Northern NJ and has created various forms of art throughout his life. Since 2012, his passion has been stone sculpture. As an existential-humanistic psychologist, he finds many connections and applications between psychology andsculpting a medium that is millions of years old. Dan’s approach is one of patience and humility. The relationship that is developed with each stone and the process of sculpting itself are critical to the creative experience. Similar to the human psyche, sculpting is an evolution of formation and becoming. Dan also finds carving stone quite cathartic as the sculptural challenge leads to deep self-reflection and change.
So, with this month's emotional focus being on breath, I wanted to share a new song called July. This song for me is about waking up in the morning on your birthday, taking your first breath and realizing how different things are. It's hard to accept change, but breathing helps. This is a rough demo of just a vocal and piano but I'll finish her up at some point :)
“Fucked Up Crazy” comes out during the month where I’m exploring Loneliness in my Raw Emotions project. At its core the song is really about caving in to being with someone you know is probably going to completely tear you apart, but you do everything you can to justify in order to not feel lonely. The song itself is wrapped up in a love story where it feels like I’m convince that this person and I are perfect for each other, and that being together might be perfect since we are both “f***ed up”. The truth is it’s really just the powers of a very manipulative and brilliantly tricky dark side of my mind. In this song I really just don’t want to be alone and as vulnerable and “taboo” as that is to say, I thought it’d be really important to explore this part of my life that scares the shit out of me.
Here's the voice note from the original idea of the song and the final song.
Originally from Ft. Lauderdale Florida, Rafaela Remy Sanchez lives in Brooklyn, New York where she takes care of her plants, works at a branding agency and manages her own Instagram poetry account, rafpoems. Rafpoems alters the idea of the poem away from a static presentation, to a fluid representation of thought. Through screen recordings, her followers read the poems as they’re written in real time, allowing themselves to become immersed in the creation and thought process of the poet. Rafaela’s poems are a reflection of how she views the world, both as an abstract manifestation of emotion and an amorphous sequence of actions. At times, she mixes her poems with her Hispanic heritage, using the Spanish language to express herself and connect with the sometimes distant aspects of her identity. In conjunction with her writing, Rafaela also co-leads the Women's Poetry Workshop, a free, monthly, women-only workshop focused the growth of female poets through collaborative writing and critiquing, as well as strengthening the conversation between women and the outside world through poetic dialogue.
It's been lonely not playing on stage for so long (20 months to be exact) so I am SO excited for you to experience Raw Emotions LIVE. It’s going to be a very special show with multiple instruments, live looping, live production, a full band and as always, MANY emotions.
I wanted to share a sneak preview of one of the live songs so you can get an idea of what it's going to sound like. Check out Kurt Cobain T-Shirt below.
Montreal. I wrote this song last year remembering a trip to Montreal. Not one of the easiest ones to write, but I love it. It captures loneliness in a beautifully tragic way, an honest way. This is just a demo but it’ll find it’s way home someday soon.
