about
WABL|HiH|W is about how I've perceived my mental state in the year and a half period since graduating university and attempting to start a freelance composition career. It's been...emotional. And sharing all of this, even through the medium of music which is my safe haven, is embarrassing and exposing. But I feel like it's important to do. Being a songwriter, to me, means sometimes revealing things we might rather keep quiet. And for someone like me, talking about this sort of thing is salve on the wound.
What A Beautiful Life is right at the beginning - I was endlessly optimistic, I had work lined up, things were great. The month of June 2015 in particular was incredible. I had an interesting, thought-provoking and inspiring project (scoring the video game Particle Fleet), I was making a bunch of money for it, and I felt fearlessly independent. I was especially proud being a successful musician right out of the gates - music being a business that is not kind to people.
Happiness is Here is the calming down. Things had slowed down and I had tempered myself. Everything was...fine! I was making a living, I had a variety of projects I was working on, I had doubts and fears like any other person but things were working out.
Worth is where I am right now. Things are worse, and I've finally had to confront the notion that I probably need to get a job outside of writing music. The 'dream' - writing music for a living - was such a far off concept growing up, but I ended up living the dream. And I realized that dream really early on in life, at 21.
At 23, such a short time after having realized that dream, the idea of having to put it on hold - the idea that I've failed at this - is devastating.
I know that compared to some other musicians, those who are used to working day jobs to support their music, compared to that I seem incredibly lucky to have done it full-time at such a young age. But I also know that from a non-musician's point of view, simply wanting to work in your field full-time doesn't seem like an unreasonable goal. And yet it is. And I've prided myself on being able to do just that, especially on my own, without working for someone else.
To have tasted the nectar and then to have to give it up is heartbreaking.
lyrics
Yeah!
I hear the shotgun
And out of the gates I run
I'm not the type to stand and wait
Hoping to get a break
I am a tiger
Prowling on the Earth alone
I'm on the hunt for the future I want
I'm gonna take it, gonna take it
So when the light comes in I'm ready to go
And I have never felt more in control
My dreams are alive
What a beautiful life
And when the night goes down there's music around
And colours are bursting in into sound
My dreams are alive
What a beautiful life
'Cause when I get knocked down
I can make things better
I've got the power now
I choose to make things better
I can make things better
Come sit next to me
Move a little closer
Let me show you in to my life
I moved somewhere new
And written on the wall there
"Happiness is here"
Now and forevermore
Now and forevermore
Calmer now and I'm stable, but the joy is still alive (x4)
And of course I've got doubts
But the joy is still alive
I can drown them all out
If the joy is still alive
Still alive, still alive
I'm still alive
I'm not the same as I was
I hide away but the problem's not outside me
I can still hear those words
I used to sing so proudly
But my conviction's blurred
They don't have the same effect
But they're all that I have left
My dreams are alive
What a beautiful life
My dreams are alive
What a beautiful life
My dreams are alive
What a beautiful life
My dreams are alive
This has to be beautiful
My dreams are alive
What a beautiful life
My dreams are alive
What a beautiful life
My dreams are alive
What a beautiful life
My dreams are alive
This has to be beautiful, beautiful
This has to be beautiful (∞)
credits
from
Album Fünf,
track released September 17, 2016
Composed, recorded, mixed and mastered by Finn M-K.
license
all rights reserved
