I’m at the end of week 4 of social distancing and strict quarantine measures in Toronto, and have been spending most of my nights in music. The songs give me large landscapes to wander through, carrying my own feelings, uncertainties, impatiences, and griefs and learning what I could do with them.
蔡健雅 Tanya Chua’s 遺書 The Will has been a staple meditation song for me ever since it was released. This song sings from the heart of personal struggles with depression and despair, and is strikingly honest about what it sounds like to look at the world from a place of fatigue and bitterness. It allows those emotional landscapes validity and importance in their existence, but also reckons directly with the heaviness of hopelessness, while calling for more tenderness.
In a season where we are revisioning and redefining what normalcy is, and what expectations to place on ourselves, 遺書 is a reminder to acknowledge the pathways we take, who we are in every season of our lives, and to be kinder to ourselves.
我曾愛過的都愛過了 I have loved the things I loved
曾看不開的或許不一定都要釋懷 The things I couldn’t let go of, maybe I don’t have to let go of
我也認真過了付出多過獲得 I have been earnest, I have given more than I received
但願他們記得感動的每一刻 May they remember every moment they have been moved
把留下的淚水藏不住的心碎 and turn the leftover tears and the unhidden heartbreak
寫成歌給人安慰 into songs for comfort
我閉上眼睛唱著 感謝這一生沒白費 I will close my eyes and sing, and thank that this life was not in vain.
Our JxMs 