I'm a little late, I thoughtI hope it doesn't wait. Within the next minute I ran into her at the traffic light. We walked together to the café.
The Glyk is one of the artists of the city that I was lucky enough to meet through the school. She has sounds ranging from hip hop to electronic, jazz to folk. She plays guitar, sings, participates in polyphonic ensembles, and composes. We talked about her trilogy Abyss and most of all I was impressed by the way he writes. She drapes her music and performance over her friends' lyrics, something that started spontaneously and randomly in high school and continues to this day.
the Smoke Abyss, the last part of the trilogy, was written four years ago.
It was freshman year, we were already quarantined...
It speaks of a phase of life when you are confused, find dead ends everywhere and don't make sense of many things that happen. It talks about a lot of confusion and this feeling that... what's the point? (Glyk)
The Michael Kastanakis, her friend and the song's lyricist, shared with me the thoughts she had at the time that prompted her to write it.
Don’t you see the world? Well it ain’t no bliss… MI had just come of age, had gone to school away from home and was encountering "adult life" and all that it entailed for the first time. In the song I recorded this anxiety I felt about tomorrow, about myself and life in general.
Should have known sooner that your lies are rich… On the other hand, I found myself in a relationship with a man who made me feel a lot of things for the first time - I would call it love. It didn't end well in that relationship and the bitterness, sadness, pain and all those emotions were building up in my head, aggravating the situation.
Mama used to put me down with a goodnight kiss, now I’m drowning in a liquor and a smoke abyss… Throughout the song there's a juxtaposition between how it used to be when we were young, we didn't care about anything and we were carefree, and how we are now that everything is fucked up.
Keep your emotions cheap… It was a piece of advice I gave myself. I am generally outspoken with my feelings, so in this case I had done the same. I was thinking afterwards that if I had been more sparing maybe I wouldn't have been so hurt by the situation.
Reaching for your love jumping off that bridge… although easily interpreted as suicidal tendency, is not. For me, it meant that I would do anything to save this relationship, and that was without regard to my own personal gain.
Glyk told me that this piece is musically closer to its original form than the other two she has published. Specifically for the second chorus, she wanted there to "they all pop up", to give the feeling of being you turn over a table.
It's my favorite because, I think if not all of us, most of us have been through and go through phases like that from time to time and it's the one that speaks most to me, so to speak. That was the reason I chose to bring this story here. This piece is at once a reminder, a hug, and an outburst. An honest account with no pretense of optimistic promises. A reality that disappoints us, hurts us, angers us, traps us, but at the same time sets us free. A reminder that no person is alone, and that it is okay to feel. It's okay to be hurt. It's okay to vent. It's okay to learn.
It's okay to be found in a
Smoke Abyss.
: Anna Maria Louloudi
