Right now I am feeling as if millions of thoughts and feelings were flowing in a chaotic way within myself, allowing to see just a little crack of so much light I cannot glimpse, of so much truth I cannot embrace, of so much beauty I cannot stand... And it's only up to me to bring back every lived experience to the right place they belong, bringing back together the pieces of a broken time which are part of the perfect equation between reality and imperfection.
I
don’t exactly know how the idea behind this song was conceived. I
vaguely remember that I wrote the verse in Spanish first and left it
piled among a thousand other ideas without getting any further
developing, a chaotic mix of words that would end up written down on
pieces of paper trying to make sense in vain. That was in 2010 and
just one year had passed since I had gone through my first psychotic
episode, so it was not a very happy moment in my life. I would
usually get drunk alone at a very small and gloomy apartment while I
was supposed to be attending classes at the cinema school. All I
could think about was music but I was not fully conscious, I just
felt impotent on my skin, so I would simply abandon myself into
resignation as though no other thing could get me a sight of relief.
Fortunately,
years later I changed direction and decided to give making music a try
and that was one of the first and most important steps in the scaling
of my healing process. Little by little, all those disordered ideas
started to make sense and I found opportunities where others would only
see a dead end. I quit smoking and my voice started to become
powerful. I discarded everything or everyone that would not support
me in following my dreams or allowing me to advance in my journey,
getting rid of the burden of envy and ignorance. I had to lose it all
but I found my peace in return. Because that’s what this song is
about. That is who I am.
This
song is about the loss of willingness. But what is willingness,
anyway? The way I see it, sometimes people confuse having willingness
with keeping on going no matter whether other people get hurt along
the way. I think it is important for us to acknowledge that our
actions affect our mental health inevitably because we are in this
together. Nothing pure in me means, ironically, I’m nothing without
you, but just like the last line of the lyrics says: “That’s the
purest thing in me”. I’d rather hurt myself, metaphorically, than
be ruthless and act like everyone else, desperate to trample on
each other. Nothing pure in me is about knowing that being sensitive
and vulnerable does not equate to weakness. It makes you feel things
deeper, it makes you feel alive. Knowing that having principles and
ethics does not necessarily mean being unrealistic but, actually,
quite the opposite. It denotes emotional intelligence. And above all,
knowing that being kind does not make you a fool, it turns you into a
better human being. Kindness is the new wisdom.
Production
I knew the instrumentation for this song needed to be minimalist and
delicate and that’s how the idea of the piano as the main
conductor came to me. Those notes mimicking the melody of the verse
along the song are like sharpened touches of sound that almost feel
like ice or snow. I really like the concept and progression of the chords
in this song. For the bridge and the chorus, I was highly inspired by
the score of the Pan’s Labyrinth movie, an instrumental
music piece called Lullaby,
which is stunningly beautiful and shares this delicateness with my
song. I’m very proud of the vocals too, except for the falsetto in
the last note of the song and the “when I’m stuck down THERE”
line that gets united with the following one, lyrically speaking.
Aside from that, I think that
these may be one of the best vocals I’ve ever recorded for a song.
