Brioni's open letter
Dear mental health,
I’m an artist, London based.
Writing this open letter for <Thread>, I’ve been ask myself how to tell what I feel inside and how to begin. I couldn’t find an answer so I’ll follow my stream of unconsciousness and let the words of my songs go.
I’ve been dealing with mental health since I was a child and I never spoke about it.
Now that I’m a woman and that I’m finally writing my own stuff, I began to notice that all my lyrics are full of connections to the theme.
It’s like following a trail made of crumbs I left in my mind. It’s all clear in my music and I will talk to you about that.
My new single coming out on April 24 it’s called “Manifest”. I have other 3 tracks coming out called “In my garden”, “Timeless”, “Bamboo”. All the 4 of them speaks about 4 different phases of my life, connected by one unique fil rouge: how I feel, how we can feel together, to not feel lonely, what we can do to change, to help ourselves, to defeat the dark places in our minds.
About “Manifest”, the scene takes place in an imaginary world where “anyone can try to be, But everyone can’t always win the game”. It can be understood in many ways and speaks about our world, dreams and aspirations seen from the mystical point of view. “We can let it cover us and let it all devour us, We can wait till all is done and we are all the same” explores the loneliness and smallness of the human nature. In these weird times we are living in, we can use our isolation days to better understand who we are and to decide what we want to change. We have to take a leaf from music and art, to be brave and turn the tables.
Listening to “In my garden” is like walking in a place made of different phases of my life all together. The path begins with insecurity and incapacity to feel the right things, so the “broken promises” arrive together with breached bonds of trust and dark places, losing the people you love. Then, analyzing myself, I understood that I was tying to please those people, but there was no need because they would had love me for who I am, no masks, no tricks. I ask for forgiveness and I offer the “honesty blossom” to change things, promising I will never be that person again.
Sometimes it’s difficult to accept ourselves, and we try to please the other becoming something we don’t recognize. But we have to cultivate our garden and nourish it to understand the beauty in it. No matter what.
“Timeless”, to be released in June, is a special song dedicated to my father, who I recently lost. I see his face in a different place and I know he is not here but I would like to listen to his voice again calling me with the same tone we knew, otherwise I would feel alone and unknown. Like I say in the riff.
It was really difficult to write the lyrics although they were coming out as a stream. The same thing happened while I was recording it. In my mind there were really “timeless images going to combine like a puzzle made of million pieces”. And I still feel like “I lost my pieces” sometimes, but I know that I can travel with my mind and choose the memories I like the most to feel better. About this, I speak about “rise and fall” of an ancient sea. In my mind I’m in the place of our heart, Sicily (Italy’s island).
I didn’t write this song on purpose but it was natural and it didn’t seem right to stop it. Sometimes you don’t want to expose yourself, especially when we come to vulnerability. Instead, this can create a meeting point with other people experiencing the same things and help you not to feel lonely. It can be understood in many ways but this is how I felt when I wrote it, and, I hope it gives joy to everyone who is missing someone.
I have another song called “Bamboo” and it analyzes the relationship I have with someone very close to me in my family and how we dealt all together with mental health. How we discovered again our union as a family after therapy, after so much love “feeling like a bamboo, strong enough to make it through”.
I’m feeling lost, sometimes oppressed by my own choices or by the opinions and judgment of the people I love, I have nightmares about losing them, about my father, about my family who is far from me now because of the virus and, what is the only thing that makes me come back to surface and breathe again? Art.
Art in every shape, the things I paint, the clothes, the shoes, the plates, the furniture, my paintings, the exhibitions all over the world, my music, the new music I discover, all the new infinite melodies I could create and all the melodies that I’ll never discover, the concerts in usual places, the music in headphones, the music of the nature, Earth’s music, birds music, sounds, the sea, the mountains. Everything is art. There is so much beauty in the world and throughout the years, I learnt - also thanks to therapy - to internalize and understand my fears and to transform them in strength and reaction, to produce more beauty. To make my part.
It’s not easy at all, and sometimes you need help to do it, to me it worked out. Sometimes you just need a friend. Sometimes you just need someone to write an open letter to, like Thread.
Thank you,
Brioni.