THE WAY BACK TO YOU

An intimate first look (+ listen!) at the making of my new album. Plus: Tillie Olsen and the creative mother's "unnatural silence."

Thank you for reading Resilience! I’m so glad you’re here, however it works for you. Much to come this summer, including new perks for paid subscribers, stay tuned. And now for this week’s offering. Remember, no matter your story — you can always begin again. xx

Back in my natural habitat.

I recently read a piece by Jessica Grosse in The New York Times about the writer Tillie Olsen and the toll of women’s labor on life and art. Olsen, who raised four children, refers to the long period in her life when she didn’t write as her “unnatural silence:”

“Where the gifted among women (and men) have remained mute, or have never attained full capacity…it is because of circumstances, inner and outer, which oppose the needs of creation.” — Tillie Olsen

I couldn’t get the phrase “unnatural silence” out of my mind. I was in the grocery store, running late as always, trying to figure out dinner. I ran into a friend of mine, a critically-acclaimed novelist and mother of two. She was wandering the badly lit, football field of a supermarket with her new baby on her chest, also trying to figure out how to feed everyone.

“Who am I?” she joked, and I got the joke.

We both ended up with a rotisserie chicken, one that this particular supermarket packages in a plastic bag with a handle not unlike a woman’s handbag. My friend and I left with our chicken purses, and we headed out to pick up our children from school.

As I drove, I thought:

The liminal space between Chicken Purse and school pick-up is betwixt and between. It’s where I let go of all I did not accomplish — the writing, the songs — where I savor the scraps, like the aftertaste of something delicious, leaving one world for the next.

That particular day, I couldn’t get one particular scrap out of my head. I listened, again and again, to a demo I was working on. The chorus followed me as I drove up 9G, as my co-pilot, Chicken Purse, threatened to erase me:

Gone, gone is the day / Gone, gone is the way back to you.

How to bridge the gap?

Blissful studio daze.

I know a thing or two about unnatural silences, and I’m grateful for Tillie for telling it like it is. For too long, I’ve thought there was something wrong with me. Could it really be that life was just, well, really fucking lifey?

It’s taking me years to finish a book proposal. It’s taking me years to make album #4. I haven’t made an album in so long that most of my readers don’t even know I was (yes, I’ll say it) a critically-acclaimed singer-songwriter for ten years, culminating with my album Wolves, which I wrote and recorded in a fervor during and after my son, Lou’s first treatment for cancer. When the album came out, I was out of money. I could barely pay the publicist. I was dealing with PTSD. I was late for rehearsals, for sound checks, at the mercy of babysitters. I played my last show at the Bowery Ballroom in my street clothes, as I hadn’t had time to change, to bridge the gap between Chicken Purse and Alexa Wilding.

I didn’t play another show, or make another album for eight years. I told people I had moved on. But the truth was, if I couldn’t do what I loved 100%, I wasn’t going to do it at all.

Type A much?

When we first left the city, before moving further upstate, we spent a year in the suburbs. I remember going for a run along the Old Croton Aqueduct, listening to the new album of a singer-songwriter I greatly admired. While I’m sure she had her own challenges, she didn’t have mine, and somehow she still had a career. I listened to that album so much I knew every breath, my fantasies ran as I ran, as though the stories were my own. I was so ashamed of these runs. So much so that when I went to see this songwriter perform (we are acquaintances) I felt my face flush.

I made a promise to return, to run to the beat of my own drum, no matter how long it might take.

But the unnatural silence has gone on seemingly forever. It’s been like walking through smoke, or endless, badly lit supermarket aisles. It wasn’t that I wasn’t working — I wrote on Instagram, now on Substack; I contributed essays to magazines, I wrote scraps of songs when I could — but I couldn’t seem to find a stretch of time long enough to finish a thought, to change from my street clothes into that fabulous dress.

It seemed Chicken Purse always won.

Until recently.

An old show flyer of mine (with dear CallMeKat!) still on the wall at the studio. I guess I never left :)

Last month, I brought my scraps and returned to the studio. It suddenly dawned on me that I had to just show up as I was. That scraps would turn into something. That the fear of disappearing, of the unnatural silence, was a story worth exploring. And explore it I would until I had an album.

I got off the M train. I passed Diner, and Marlow and Sons, the scene of many a late night in my former life. I walked down to the river until it was almost a run. I couldn’t get back to the studio, to my dear friend and engineer, Murray fast enough.

I brought my scraps. And in honoring my scraps, I somehow bridged the gap. Scraps become something. Scraps already ARE.

In the same vocal booth where I made my first records many years ago, I sat with my silence, with Chicken Purse. With all the sleepless nights, the fear, my children’s warm bodies alongside mine. I sat with the street clothes, with my fellow mothers, wandering the halls, the aisles, running the aqueduct, wondering how I got stuck in the betwixt and between.

I cut through the silence as though with a knife, humming the verses where there weren’t yet lyrics, but knowing there would be — soon.

A MEDITATION:

May I begin again. No matter my story, no matter how thick the silence. May I sing.

Sending love to all. Honor those scraps, they are something. Before we know it, they will be songs. I look forward to sharing more with you, and do share your heart in the comments, too.

xx Alexa

PS. Here’s another scrap I’m excited about, and dear Murray at the helm.

Up and down, up, down.