Limited

I hate the reality that I have limits, even though everybody does.

I really suck at resting, though.

I’ve been off coffee for about at month now, ever since a doctor informed me that I was well on my way to forming a stomach ulcer thanks to my reliance on coffee, spicy food, and much needed migraine medication.

Now join me, if you will, in reflecting over this past week: I have been sick for the last 8 days, and oddly the most miserable part of it all hasn't been the symptoms, but the sitting and doing nothing.

For instance, on day two of being ill, I decided I needed to make homemade spaghetti and meatballs from scratch because DUH WHEN YOU'RE SICK THAT'S THE ONE THING YOU SHOULD DEFINITELY DO. By day four, I was sleeping so much more than usual that at 3 a.m. I woke up, bored with sleeping. This new ritual continued for the remainder of the week. My shining restless moment, however, came on day seven when early in the morning I said to myself, "I probably do feel better and should run 10 miles"...and then proceeded to run 10 miles.

Now I sit here, still sick, and still wondering why I possess no chill.  

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Some of you may already know this, but D. CLEA released our album IN SICKNESS in August, and that album will be followed by it's other half: IN HEALTH. I do welcome the irony that I was able to finish writing all of the lyrics for this album while being sick this week. Something feels uniquely symbolic about that.

I am eager to work on this next album, mostly because it is a continuation of IN SICKNESS, and I am so very connected to my work that I crave that sense of completeness for my own self. In releasing an album, at least to me, there is an inner sort of "releasing" that happens as well. These are songs I wrote alone, usually in my bedroom. And whatever emotion drove the songwriting, I felt it alone. So, when other people hear one of the songs and think, "this is my story, this is my feeling," and they take ownership, letting the song belong to them, it’s at that moment my own story finally feels like it belongs to me. The products of the loneliest moments of my life could connect me to a million strangers who all are thinking "me too". That is the beauty and power of a song.

Apart from IN HEALTH, there will still be more to look forward to from the D. CLEA crew and I! We hope to be releasing some more videos soon of live footage as well as a restructured cover song or two. I think it's safe to say as well that we have caught the tour bug and are ready to be playing shows a WHOLE lot more. We have sincerely loved the shows we have gotten to play this year. 

I'll wrap this up with a short clip of a demo I finished. Part of the writing process for me is actually recording my full song idea before showing it to Matt, Caleb and Ryan. My songs can often start off sounding very simple and almost pop/folk when I just play them for the band on my keyboard or guitar. Making a demo allows me the chance to mess around with effects and jack up the song just enough to where it's already out of the box by the time anyone else hears it, and therefore, too weird to ever go back inside the box.

Again, I apparently really don't like to be limited.
As far as production techniques with this particular demo, I tried to take some new risks with the effects on the vocals. It may be a little hard to distinguish, but I bussed the Main vocal track in this clip to a tremolo effect, and added a high octave with a big reverb to give it that sort of "haunted" feeling...kinda the way you would feel if you were alone in a room with just your thoughts: you don't really feel alone, you almost feel more crowded in those times. 
One other thing I tried that I am excited about was experimenting with "writing in" an effect on the entire track. As the vocal line finishes "When I wake...when I wake up..." I gradually turned up a reverb effect on the whole track to give it an illusion of falling more into a dream sequence, directly contradicting with the lyrics that are being sung. There are times in life when dreams feel so real and being awake feels more like the actual nightmare. I wanted to capture that reality in the effects.

Hope you enjoy!

With gratitude,
Darien