THE LINER NOTES

WATERLILIES (Jan 2020)

The night before my twentieth birthday I found out I had a half-sister I never knew existed. Even though I was rejoicing over the gift of a new sister - it’s still incredible to me how amazing that is – I was also coming to terms with yet more difficult revelations about my absent father. I was reading Yrsa Daley Ward’s poetry book bone that night to try and calm myself down (it’s the closest thing I have to a Bible) and when I got to the poem poetry, I burst into tears.

“Maybe your life will work.

Most likely it wont at first

but that

will give you poetry.”

My tears were partly joyful. I knew Yrsa was right: the moments that had tested me the most had also given me the most poetry – music, poems, and now a new sister. After that night, I would recite those words to myself whenever anything went wrong, or was difficult, or seemed impossible to understand. I think of this mixtape, which I have been working on for the last two years, as my first collection of poetry. It is uncensored, unfiltered, and sometimes unforgiving. It contains within it some of the ways the world has done me wrong, and some of the ways I’ve messed up but then put things back together.

During the two years I was making this tape I: almost slept with a racist, made myself palatable, spat myself out, made myself terrifying, imagined a black wedding, had sex with a woke white boy and then wondered if he was woke, strode around new cities like I owned them, poured wine down the sink, drank lots of wine, fought with a teacher, realised i was lonely, felt irreversibly changed by grief, gave up on a love I wanted badly, and then on another one, went on great dates, went on bad dates, styled myself as a hip-hop hoe, fell in love with hip-hop, said me too into the mirror lots of times never out loud, broke down, spent days crying under my covers, missed my friends, resurrected, discovered I love cooking, wrote lots of songs, performed for small crowds, performed for rich art people, worried non-stop about money, had my card declined in coffee shops, felt sexy, straightened my hair lots, felt conflicted about straightening my hair, decided i was beautiful, thought i was ugly,  hung up on a booty-call.

I want to share this project with you because I want to open up my life to myself. I want to stop harbouring shame. I want to revel in the ways I have radically survived when the world seemed too terrible for words. Listening to these songs now outside the places of their creation, I am starting to hear them with new ears. I imagine how different people in my life will hear them. Maybe the music will resonate with some and disappoint others. What will my mother think of all the sex? What will my friends think of all the disasters? What will all the people I try to impress make of my unfiltered self? I have not always lived as I have wanted to. Does anyone?

I am so thankful to all the people who have been part of helping me create for myself versions of this world that are inhabitable, where I am worth an incredible amount. Not just in spite of all the disasters, but also because of those things and what they have taught me. Special thanks goes to my real family, particularly my sisters and my mum, and to my musical family, particularly Aly and Curt, who played such a fundamental part in helping me believe in myself as an artist. On my twenty-first birthday, I emptied my bank account to get “this will give you poetry” tattooed on my ribcage. It hurt. But it was my way of celebrating everything that’s happened in my twenty-one years here on planet earth. Now I’ve just turned twenty-two, and there are lots of things to think about. A new love, a new city, a new life perhaps. It’s overwhelming. But I feel more ready for life than I ever have. I don’t believe everything happens for a reason. But I have found there to be poetry in everything.

The first single from waterlilies, Family Drama, will be released on 22nd November.

With gratitude,

Lucy DK.

Stream waterlilies HERE.