There is a strange moment that happens when you finish making something.
For so long, it exists only in your head.
You are writing it, shaping it, changing it, wondering if it is finished yet. You live with it so closely that it can be difficult to imagine it existing anywhere else.
And then, suddenly, it does.
I Am What Remains is finished.
The songs are no longer only mine.
The photographs have become part of something larger than the moments in which they were taken.
The words have left my notebooks and found their way onto pages that someone else can read.
The things I made with my hands or selected with intention have become physical pieces of the same story.
And the collection is here.
I don't think I could have known when I started where it would lead.
Maybe that's the nature of creating something honest.
You begin with an idea, but somewhere along the way, the work starts telling you what it wants to become.
This collection became bigger than an album.
It became a place for all the pieces to exist together.
Music.
Words.
Photographs.
Things made by hand.
Memories.
And all the little pieces of life that found their way into it without asking permission.
There is still so much I don't know.
There are things I'm still learning.
Things I'm still becoming.
Stories that haven't been written yet.
And I think I'm finally okay with that.
Because this was never meant to be a conclusion.
It was a moment of recognition.
A moment when I could look at everything that had gathered here and say,
This is where I am.
Not where I was.
Not where I thought I would be.
Not where I might eventually go.
Here.
And maybe that is enough.
So I'm leaving I Am What Remains here now.
Not because there is nothing more to say, but because sometimes a story needs to be allowed to stand on its own.
It can be listened to.
It can be read.
It can be looked at.
It can be held.
It can mean something completely different to someone who discovers it than it meant to me when I made it.
And that's okay.
Maybe that's the final part of creating something,
learning when to let it go.
So this is not goodbye.
It's simply the end of this particular chapter.
The first collection in a catalog that, I hope, will continue to grow and change with me.
And when I look back at this one someday, I think I'll remember more than the songs.
I'll remember the summer.
The photographs.
The writing.
The making.
The moments that became memories before I even realized I was keeping them.
And I'll remember that somewhere in the middle of all of it, I stopped looking for the person I used to be.
I found the person who was still here.
I am what remains.
And now, I get to see what comes next.
0 comments