“A song was stirred up in me last night and it was the first time in a long time that I communed with the Spirit who walks with me. It was a nice reminder that she’s there. I think it’s also a reminder that I can’t intellectualize everything. {…} As was asked in Creative Somatic Alchemy class, what would happen if I accepted the inner critic as it was, and did things regardless? What would I be accepting if I simply accepted myself?”
-journal entry, Feb 14, 2023
Bring Me Back is one of my favorite songs on my forthcoming album, the river whispered, and it was written in a moment of radical self-honesty using a gorgeous guitar loop.
It’s only now that I look back through the pages of my journal that I realize just how much of the early stages of healing and recovery I was in at the time. I was in physiotherapy after a harrowing hand injury and I wasn’t really playing guitar. I was taking a creative course in an attempt to regain my creative fire. I was still getting accustomed to living in the Caribbean after years of living in relative isolation in Spain during the worst part of the pandemic. And, I was making new friends all while being painfully aware that the version of me that they were getting to know was only a shell of my real self which was shadowed by the drama (and trauma) of the previous year.
And that’s what much of the song is about. I was trying to get back to my old self. And somewhere in there, I was realizing that it wasn’t just my ‘self’ that I was trying to return to, but my soul—my real self that I couldn’t quite reach because of the profound dissociation that (I now know) I was deeply in.
This song was seeded by my contemplation on the concept of the spiritual river, particularly
’s prose about “rivering oneself” as well as all that I learned in that creative course*. I learned that rivering is a continuous process. “Pollutants” drop in our river and it’s up to us to protect our sacred space and cleanse our own waters.“River, river, dont you know?
I have nowhere else to go
Help me find my way back home
River me to my soul”
(I invite you to grab a pair of headphones for a fuller listening experience)
There are many things I had wanted to do differently with this album and one of them is collaboration. It’s been a very long time since I’ve collaborated with someone on one of my songs and I’m still amazed and humbled that the über talented poet and author
accepted my invitation to not only write a poem for this song but also jump on the mic and record it.When I sent it to her, the song was about 80% done and there was space left for the bridge. I had written some words for it on my own but I was dissatisfied with what I had written so I started thinking, “Who do I know who could fill in this empty space with something beautiful, something different?” Britt instantly came to mind. I’d heard and read some of her work before so I trusted that whatever she created would complement and honor the song. I told her, “Listen to the song and write whatever comes to you.”
When she sent me the first draft, tears came to my eyes. Honestly, poets, to me, are magical people who pull beautiful words from the sky using special powers. I love that her poem is its own entity and yet it elevates the song to new heights, especially the river mantra at the end. When we recorded her, I could barely keep myself together. We sat on the swing in Junckollage, one of my favorite hangouts in Port of Spain, and we used my travel mic to record the haunting words you hear on the track. And when we realized that the sound of the swing was filtering into the mic, we decided to lean into it and record the swing itself.
That recording day is etched into the walls of my heart. The lights were dim, the incense was burning, the swing was gentle and Britt’s words in the recording sent me into emotional fangirl mode nearly the whole time. I managed to reign myself in and stay “professional” but I let those emotions rise and fall as I mixed and edited later on.
With the poem, I sort of imagine an ancient river spirit sitting on a swing, doling out words of wisdom. I also imagine sitting on a river bank, staring at the water as the very same river spirit circles me, gently doling out her words of wisdom. In the mixing process, I tried to capture this through the creaking of the swing, the gentle woosh of the river and the panning of Britt’s voice from left to right.
I was really in love with the river mantra at the end of the song and I always wanted to hear more of it when the song ended, but I was concerned with (or really, scared of) extending the song beyond the original 5 and a half minutes (not gonna lie–I have a complex about the length of my songs). Fortunately, Britt had no qualms about having a longer version of the song, which is what led to the 8.5 minute version in this letter today. To us, this is the real version of the song. We call it Bring Me Back (To The Riverside).
BRITT: To say we intentionally set out to do Bring Me Back (To The Riverside) would be a lie; instead, we came upon the idea organically, in one of our conversations about music and life and art in general. Feroza mentioned the length of the song, and we discussed extending it with some instrumentals, wondering what else there was to say in the song, what other message(s) could come through. Through conversation, we decided on adding the mantra “let me go”, which more directly embodies the spirit of release encapsulated in the poem. That somehow coalesced into extending other parts of the song after we realized that we didn’t want to break up the second round of the poem, until we had an almost entirely different song on our hands.
And not to be dramatic about it, but it is my favourite version—not because Feroza got me on the mic (again, in a different way), but because I believe it allows you to dive more deeply into the song. As you read about Feroza’s side of the layers embedded into the song–and upon mine, on my own Substack–I hope you can understand more deeply the healing the song offers you.
It is a song I can play on loop and fall into a deeply meditative state; it is also a song I have played in my car to decompress to after a day of work. I invite you to fall into it, heart-first, without holding your breath; breathe it in, all of it, bring it into your lungs, your bloodstream…and let it go.
Sprinkles from the River:
🍃read Britt’s newsletter about the song here:
🍃we invite you to support the early release of Bring Me Back via Bandcamp. This directly supports our creative work, making it sustainable for the two of us
🍃for Spotify users, you can pre-save the song here so that it lights up in your Spotify on the day it drops (Feb 23)
🍃the first single, Human, pt ii, is available wherever you get your music! Listen on your preferred platform here.
🍃 the Creative Somatic Alchemy course mentioned is beginning its next cohort in March and I highly recommend it. It’s a live online course full of opportunities to connect and dialogue with the other participants. It’s facilitated by the wonderful
More information hereAnd if you’ve made it this far, I thank you for your sacred attention.
~Feroza
 | A guest post by
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Ahhh it's alive! How magical, how surreal, how scary. This is all new and yet the sharing of he(art) is the same. Thank you for inviting me onto this journey with you 💜
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