medium.com/@benjamin.seretan/in-the-largeness-of-her-joy-two-songs-remembrance-5b35a2d921cd

In a few short weeks I will be putting out a record. It's called Youth Pastoral. And today I'm sharing the first song. It's called "Power Zone."
The album is significant for me, the culmination of actual years of work. And - it's weighing on me heavily, for a few reasons. Most of these reasons are pedestrian, what you'd expect from someone sticking their neck out creatively - I'm nervous, I hope that the world wants to hear what I've got to sing about, I hope that people like it.
But really, the main reason I'm losing sleep over these songs is this: last summer, just a couple of seasons ago, Devra Freelander, my collaborator and beloved friend, suddenly died one sunny afternoon in a terrible bike accident. It was out of nowhere, awful, the last thing anyone expected. She's gone now but it is her voice - beautiful, alive with infectious, joyous energy, and laughably nimble, singing harmony - that you hear alongside mine throughout almost every track on the record, especially this one.
Devra, for anyone unacquainted with her or her work, was actually a sculptor by trade - a fiery and deeply ecologically minded object maker that was obsessed with the hyperreal neons of post-industrial setting suns and the lines that mountain ridges make against the sky. I really encourage you to check out her big, colorful, inspiring work. This piece written by artist Claire Lachow is a good place to start. Devra was also an incredibly fun, goofy person, who loved to party and could switch seamlessly between rigorous, thoughtful discussion, heart-to-hearts, and sophomoric humor, sometimes in the same breath.
But she was a tremendous singer, too - talented and super into it and just…effortlessly adept, so graceful. She had a true gift, one that she had really only just started to share with me, with our friends. She sang smiling with us, made every song better and brighter, she brought a sparkling and electric energy to the stage and to these recordings. Everyone loved watching her sing. She found pure, lightning joy in it, and let us experience that joy again, or maybe for the first time. Singing with her was fun, absolutely. We had even started working out arrangements of her own songs, which still floor me - they're poignant and deep and strongly inspired by Grease and I hope that we one day figure out a way to share them. I don't know…it's hard not to veer into overwrought language but…she was a truly amazing person who I love very much, and never did we love each other more than when we shared a microphone.
In one sense, I am so, so happy to have the album as a document. These songs remind me how she effortlessly lit up a room. And if I let my guard down enough, when I hear her sing, it's almost as if she's beside me. It's particularly magical on this song, she leaps right out of the speakers, singing just above me. But it's too convincing of an illusion, eventually I remember, and when the bubble bursts it is…just awful. I sometimes still can't bear to listen - it's too lovely, it can break my heart all over again. I can vividly recall the night we recorded Devra's vocals: a cozy room in our friend's apartment, our breath mixing in the warm radiator air in the dark of winter, a tiny cat gingerly walking between our feet as we sang. Dev had been sending me videos of her harmonizing and grinning all week. I'd like to be back there.
The songs themselves were written about another world entirely - most of them are from before Devra and I had ever even met. They describe the mythic California I experienced as a Christian teenager, my departure from God's shadow, and the path of fire I later walked down in the midst of a scary codependent relationship. I hope these themes resonate with those that listen, but it's hard for me sometimes to remember that those ideas are even in there. Sometimes, all I hear is Devra. But there's so much else present, and so many other people I love with a hand in it. Devra's death is really just a part of it all, a big looming fact. These songs are just…so much all at once.
I wrote this last summer:
The day after my friend died I walked to the corner where the accident took place - a shrine had popped up over night with candles, a note of love and sadness scrawled on the inside of a used pizza box. My two band mates met me there and, after hugging the strangers gathered around who had also been affected by my friend's life, we quickly scurried off to our practice space nearby. There was something we had to grab. When my friend had first performed live with the band she felt like she didn't have enough to do in-between her gorgeous harmony lines - there were long instrumental sections where she didn't feel she knew what to do with her hands. So we gave her a tambourine to shake, a bright pink plastic one. No one has ever been as excited to play tambourine as my friend was that afternoon - she shook it so hard she got a blister, grinning and dancing the entire time, reminding us again and again how amazing it was that we got to play music, that we were all in a room, that we were all alive. We took the pink tambourine back to the intersection and tied it to a pole with a bandana, dangling above the lit candles on the sidewalk. As we stepped back, trying to say goodbye, I could hear it rattling in the wind.
When I wrote the lyrics to "Power Zone" I was thinking about my complicated relationship with gods and saviors. Devra was not yet a part of my life. Now when I sing the line, "praying to the breeze / with asphalt in his knees" all I can think about is that street corner.
I feel deeply, awfully conflicted about how to best release an album that contains these performances. I have been torn up about it for months. At first I couldn't bring myself to work on it, and when it came time to finalize Will's mixes of these overstuffed songs, he had the kindness to just let me quietly cry in his home studio as I sheepishly asked for more of her. I want everyone to hear her, I want everyone to know she lived, to know her work, to know that she died. But I don't want to benefit from it. And what's more - chipping away at this record has been a place where I've safely done my mourning. I've had this project to nestle inside of when I think of her, which is often. I'm very scared of what will happen when it is done - will I have to face some even darker corners? Will my heart break all over again?
When you are trying to get people to listen to a record, you have to construct a narrative. Listeners need context, they need a story, they need to know what the thing is. But this album contains a narrative way outside the scope of what we set out to make. Our lovely friend sang on it, but now she's not with us - as simple and as devastating as that.
I thought about not finishing the album, maybe never releasing it, but when I asked my friends for advice they uniformly asked me one thing in reply: what would Devra have wanted? And thankfully, in the largeness of her joy on earth, she answered that question with absolutely no uncertainty - she would have wanted the whole world to hear her sing. No one disagrees with that idea! So we will do our best to share the music, despite the misgivings.
It's all very messy and extremely hard. I hope I've communicated that much to you, at least. But, if we're trying to do what Devra would have wanted, then we have to share this work, with all the infectious enthusiasm we can muster.
One final thing I've been thinking about. The night Devra came by to record vocals she had herself just that day lost a friend. So I told her hey, don't worry about it, take whatever space you need. And she said thanks, but she was planning on coming by anyway. Because she felt like singing. She felt like being in a room with friends, she felt that making music together might help.
I think it did, and I hope it can again.