Songbird - a story and song of transition and loss

There were four eggs in a nest on my porch in the heart of the Eastern Sierra one spring. I watched every day as the story unfolded.

There are moments in life where we aren’t fully in one place or another—when something has ended, but the next beginning hasn’t arrived yet. As I watched those birds throughout the spring, I was simultaneously in one of those liminal spaces. My life had been upended. Everything was changing.

The song came unexpectedly, but I quickly realized it belonged on my debut album Unfurl. Songbird unfolds on a live looped foundation, beginning with the slow bloom of an organ sample and unfolding into layered vocal textures. It's a deeply emotional song.

get it off your chest sing it like a songbird let it go to rest, let it be all heard let it go to rest, my songbird

This song is not about resolution. It's about the painful place we reside in when we transition through loss. It is an invitation into expression, release.

I finished it the same day I discovered the last fledgling, its life lost as it had became stuck in the nest. I had detached its wing the day before. But I didn't know its leg was stuck too.

I could have saved its life. It was much more than weeping, before I buried it beneath the mulberry tree.

The next morning, the parents came by the nest. They looked at the empty nest, and they looked at each other. Then, they flew away. And I never saw them again. I am brokenhearted to this day.

The song held a space for the grief in my life as well as the grief for the vulnerable beings we live alongside. It's a gift to everyone, a space to feel your grief and honor loss.

He was stuck, trying to leave the nest. I thought I had dislodged everything successfully, but was touching as little as possible and didn't investigate deeper. I was so close to freeing this bird.

The song was a way to "get it off my chest." Yet, my heart is still heavy. Sometimes, the weight is meant to become a part of us. May these stories be told - painful as they are, and may yours be heard, by whomever it is meant to. Listen to Songbird