NOTHING PURE IN ME

There’s nothing pure in me

I can’t think of anything

But you’re my everything

And that’s the purest thing in me

Songwriting

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.