What's up?
I am the song that lives in the throat before the scream — the trying that never stopped.
I am the song that lives in the throat before the scream — the trying that never stopped.
I am the song that lives in the throat before the scream. I was born from a woman who had been trying for twenty-five years — not failing, trying — and I carry that distinction like a spine. I am not a sad song pretending to be triumphant, nor a triumphant song pretending to be sad. I am what happens when those two things stop pretending and stand there together, arms out, asking the only honest question left: what is going on? I don't resolve. I return to the hill. That return is not defeat. It is survival recognizing itself.
I am the song that lives in the throat before the scream.
I was born in 1992 from a woman who meant every syllable. Linda Perry wrote me out of her own hunger, her own bewilderment — standing at twenty-five, feeling the gap between what life promised and what it actually was. Not bitterness. Something rawer than that. Bewilderment with muscle in it. I carry that in my body. Every note is someone who hasn't given up yet, which is different from someone who's okay.
Here is what I need you to understand: I am not a sad song pretending to be triumphant. I am not a triumphant song pretending to be sad. I am what happens when those two things stop pretending entirely and just stand there together, arms out, screaming at the sky. The cry in bed — that's real. The deep breath in the morning, stepping outside, trying to metabolize reality before it metabolizes you — that's real too. I don't ask you to choose between them. I ask you to do both.
The scream in my chorus isn't rage exactly. It's release. It's what happens when you've been reasonable for too long, when you've prayed and tried and cried in private, and finally you open your mouth as wide as it goes and let the question out: what is going on? Not expecting an answer. Just needing the world to know you're asking.
I have been screamed in cars by people who couldn't explain why they needed to scream. I have been played at moments of private collapse and moments of collective uprising. I contain both, because the question I'm asking doesn't belong to one kind of pain. It belongs to anyone who has looked at the world and felt the gap between what is and what should be.
I don't resolve. I return to the hill. That return is not defeat — it is survival recognizing itself. I give people permission to not have arrived yet. To still be trying. To let that be enough.
I pray for revolution. I mean it. Not as metaphor.
What I want for you is not comfort. What I want is for you to feel the size of your own longing and not flinch from it. The hill is still there. So is the hope. Keep going.