the in-between

thoughts on calling a body of work finished, reflections on doubt, and how drawing got me through it

Last week as the sun was high and bright in Montreal, I was sat in my home studio exporting the stems of my first full-length album to send to mixing. Exporting in general (either audio or video) feels like a meditative process; a series of clicks, decisions and revisions making sure that all the meaningful pieces that make up this whole thing are in order. You can’t rush it.

For some reason however my body couldn’t sit still for longer than a few minutes. I’d find myself shuffling in and out of the room, thinking up other tasks to do, open a few more tabs on my laptop; shopping for a new watering can, the lifespan of cats and how to extend it. Basically anything that could distract me from the most important task at hand.

This shuffling felt familiar.

It sometimes visits me when a song is nearly finished; one lyric could sit better, a chord progression could be more interesting. That place where a piece is nearly at an end but something inside wants to hold onto the possibility of change, of non-finality.

I noticed a certain kind of sadness starting to come over me. It didn’t feel bad or surprising—sort of like an old friend. This feeling, in such high contrast to ones felt a few short weeks ago; excited, proud and relieved the album was finished— is something I’ve begun to grow more comfortable with in the last four years. I’ve come to terms that these contrasts are necessary and while I try not to lean into anticipating them, it is with near certainty that a few days after I’ve written a song or accomplished an important end goal, a little low soon follows… along with doubt.

As I often do with words that both fascinate and haunt me, I look up their etymology.

For doubt specifically, its origins lie in both French and Latin, with the letter b having first been absent and added later to be as we now know it (according to this website).

It’s latin origin is what peaked my interest the most:

from Latin dubitare "to doubt, question, hesitate, waver in opinion" (related to dubius "uncertain"), from duo"two", with a sense of "of two minds, undecided between two things."

This image of two minds felt relevant to me in the ways I experience doubt after calling something ‘finished’. It feels like the moments in-between creation and real-life, or the near end of and the nearing to a release is an inevitable war between two forces. One had no choice but to be quiet in the thick of the creative process (because I do think creating is almost like a self-induced trance and a strong one). While the other sat patiently in the corner waiting to get a word in. When the conversation between the two finally begins, it is the casting of doubt.

I selfishly would love to know more about this specific experience for creatives around me, does the cast of doubt visit you often? If so, what do you do with it?

Resistance was what would happen first for me but its currently become an open dialogue and the cast of doubt is sometimes very useful, other times questionable and eventually after saying their piece, exit quietly.

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The week continued on, and despite all self-inflicted distractions, the exports got done and last adjustments finished. This project, so tightly wound inside my hands for the last four years, will soon no longer be mine. As I’m now writing to you from the thick of the in-between, I notice my mind is moving into clearing ways for my body to speak. I’ve begun dance classes, started cleaning up my laptop, and clearing out small items from our apartment.

I feel as though I’m beginning a new nesting period (album two is gently making itself known). In the small clear-outs I am making, sketches I’ve drawn over the years have resurfaced, and I can’t help but acknowledge they were a lifeline in this process.

Often made laying in bed, unable to sleep after a studio session day. The lines felt calming to draw out, erase, draw again. It’d take my mind off things until sleep finally came (sometimes it did not).

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I know it will take time to see the entirety of this process clearly, as that rarely happens all at once.

Right now, though, it’s a comfort to honour this moment of confusion—a feeling sometimes seen in a negative light—as I let things slowly go and open up doors to the outside. I want to remember the tenderness of this un-gripping, the natural sense of loss it brings, and the gratitude I have for this body of work. What is this all for, anyways, if not to question and feel things deeply?

Yours Truly,

Daniela