Snapshots in Time

As artists, I think many of us can identify with the feeling of having evolved past our work once it reaches the public. Several of the pieces I have been submitting to journals are at least a year old. By the time my band, Dirt Skirt recorded our first album, most of the songs were nearly four years old. I sometimes feel frustrated by this. It’s as if I can never fully enjoy the release of my work because I am no longer the person that created it. I look at certain lines and think, “that sounds childish” or “I never would word it that way now.” I expressed my frustration over this to a friend many months ago and she said, our work is a series of “snapshots in time.” Glimpses of who we were. I like to think about leaving snapshots of myself in this world. Little doodles on cave walls. I don’t have the desire to ever have children but maybe I can live on in my art. Maybe someday, somebody will read a poem of mine or listen to a song I wrote and feel less alone.

I have been thinking about some lyrics I wrote in a song called “Machine” that we recorded on the album. This is a snapshot of myself during the first Trump administration. I still identify with these words though the song feels old now. My writing coach said to ask myself if the message in the art I release is still one that I believe in. This is a message I still believe in:

”The world is teaching me to grieve and I’ve got nothing left,

Murder for power, lie, steal, and don’t look back,

Gotta keep what’s real in me and not forget,

Hold the fire, but never let it burn you away”