"Please, storm, pass": an open letter by Sophie Sanders
“This is the time that the world needs artists,” a friend told me the other night. I know that it’s true. But I’m afraid that I don’t know how to be that. In the midnight hours of March 3rd, a devastating tornado ripped through parts of Nashville, my hometown and current town. My boyfriend and I remained peacefully asleep while it happened, only to wake up to anxious are you okay? texts the next morning. We were fine, as was our untouched yard, our perfectly quiet neighborhood. But my phone quickly started telling me a different story about the state of East Nashville, Germantown, North Nashville, Cookeville, and more.
I spent the next few days doing anything to battle my overwhelming state of unaffected person’s guilt— donating bits of money I hardly have to GoFundMe’s, heading over to North Nashville with work gloves prepared to lift tree limbs, only to end up at a more well-suited PB&J making job. It seemed impossible that such devastation could exist seven minutes away, while I sat comfortably watching suburban moms walk their dogs past out my window.
It seemed even more impossible that I could relax enough to have a song idea, or carry out the task of writing it. Why should I spend three hours crafting and cushioning a catchy hook when three hours could mean a Costco diaper run delivered to the nearest donation drop-off center. I set the writing down. Later, I told myself. I will think about that later.
Fast forward five days. I open my computer and all I see is coronavirus. This thing is coming and no one can stop it. We’ve botched all the most important preliminary measures that could have lessened the disaster that awaits. Our government is doing a shit job of giving a damn. People all over the world are dying. And this is only a beginning. All I feel is anxiety. All I want is to stay home, sanitize, and hope the storm blows over. Maybe it won’t land here, I tell myself. But I know that like that tornado it is coming and it’s only a matter of luck and science whom it hits the hardest.
Outside my window a suburban mother still walks her dog peacefully past, and yet all I see is chaos. Do I have a song idea? No. My brain is too wired for that. There is no peaceful just-before-sleep state where I usually find clever titles. At 12:30 a.m., I am on Kroger’s website ordering the last remaining toilet paper in stock. We already have extra toilet paper! But what if the chaos is only worse when that extra runs out? I place my order and lay in a too-much-screen-time daze feeling the crackly skin on my over-washed knuckles.
I am meant to write. In all of my not knowing things, this is one thing I do know. I used to think I’d write other things— long things— then I picked up a guitar and stumbled into songs. In retrospect it seems like a stumble long bound to happen. My Dad is a songwriter and the apple doesn’t fall far, as they say.
I never pictured writing country songs. I don’t fit into the Bud Light wielding, pickup truck loving, throw Jesus in my lyrics boys club. (My Dad doesn’t either, but 90’s country was a different time.) As an artist, I don’t fit into the made up to the nines, glitter fringed, smile and dance around club. I’m shy and quiet and want to observe. I like black shirts and jeans and would die trying to figure out what to do with my lanky limbs if I was told to move around a stage.
I can sit on a stool shielded by my guitar, sure. But even then I’m not sure I’m an artist. If I write something worth being sung, though, and if Paul Sikes in all his brilliance wants to work up a track for it, I suppose I will be the one to sing it and put it out into the world because I don’t have the leverage to get one of those bigger named people to do it for me, yet.
That’s what happened with “Dad Bod.” It’s catchy. It’s commercial-y. Hey, I actually got beer in a song! And I was upbeat and funny and wow, look at me go. I scheduled this release just before the tornado. Just before the coronavirus reached its long invisible arms onto the hard surfaces of my town and said it was here to spread. The timing feels wrong and impossible and maybe even insensitive. I have enough anxiety about this imploding world of ours, about whether my voice is good enough to be recorded, whether this song is oddly brilliant or borderline annoying, to pile on the anxiety of whether now is the time to release it. It’s scheduled and it’s happening, and, like that tornado and like this virus, it is a matter of luck and (streaming-based) science whom and where it hits.
So I will let it be and hope that someone is in need of a laugh right now. I will let it be and hope that it assures me I’m doing something musically because it feels like an upbeat song with a commercial shot in hell in this town is not going to come out of me for a while.
Please, storm, pass.
If I am an artist, and if the world needs artists right now…well, maybe the midst of this storm is as good a time as any.
Keep your hopes up out there.
I do believe that a little hoping (and a lot of sanitizing and social isolating and educating yourself and voting and getting some people with their heads on straight into positions of power even if it feels too late helps. :)
- Sophie