Alexa Wilding by Simon McLaren.
New York based singer songwriter Alexa Wilding introduces her beautiful collaboration with Cloud Seeding, an ode to a lost pregnancy. I was extremely touched when Alexa reached out to me when the same thing happened to me. Like me she has used the experience to make art that heals, in her case music.
Mirage was a lifeline for me, as I worked on it, very slowly, while pregnant with my twins. I was unsure what being a mother would mean for my music, and it gave me a sense of artistic security to know that I would have a song to release after the boys were born.
Kevin Serra (of Cloud Seeding) had contacted me out of the blue, and I was delighted to collaborate, even though I had never written with anyone before. The skeletal arrangements he sent me reminded me of Hal Hartey‘s soundtracks. They filled me with a deep and gnawing nostalgia, especially Mirage, which at the time was only guitars and organs. It felt like a road song, and I had always wanted to write one, even though they’re usually sung by men.
The melody and line “By the time we got to Texas, it was gone, gone, gone,” came to me immediately. I remember so clearly sitting in my red chair by the window, with my notebook propped against my belly, writing that line over and over again for weeks. You daydream a lot when you’re pregnant, or at least I did. It’s a passing from one chapter into the next, and with Mirage I said goodbye to a time in my life that I would surely never experience again, the freewheeling times of a musician on the road, and the question, “will I return home?”
But songwriting works in funny ways. Songs are like prisms, they can hold a few stories, they can surprise you. My boys were born and we recorded Mirage months after with my longtime team in Brooklyn. While Mirage is indeed about traveling and disillusionment, as I sang, “it all fell to pieces, because…” I realized it was also a eulogy to a pregnancy I had lost a year earlier. So my road song turned out to be a very feminine tale of lust and loss. I wonder if I would have been brave enough to write it had I not had someone else’s musical shoulder to lean on?
For the video we turned to Paola Suhonen, of the Finnish fashion and art label, Ivana Helsinki, with whom I have made all my music videos. It seemed fitting to give the song to Paola since she documented all of my maidenhood so to speak! And in the spirit of Cloud Seeding‘s collaborative trust, we told Paola to interpret the song for herself. Per usual, her poetic imagery matched much of my daydreaming.
And that’s the story! Kevin and I are continuing to collaborate. He makes me brave and I can’t wait to have him play on my new album, too. I know my new songs are different because of Mirage. They pick up where we left off.
Mirage by Cloud Seeding with Alexa Wilding is out now.
Categories ,Alexa Wilding, ,brooklyn, ,Cloud Seeding, ,Hal Hartey, ,Kevin Serra, ,Mirage, ,Miscarriage, ,Motherhood, ,new york, ,Pregnancy, ,Simon Mclaren, ,texas
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