Emily Alone is a collection of songs made by Florist songwriter Emily Sprague during a time of great stillness and isolation with the self. An attempt to capture the dark spaces between change and acknowledge their beauty. It is a natural, isolated, and momentary tangent away from the otherwise collaborative project that is Florist, while still maintaining the documentary nature of the band that, like all things, is a mutable entity in this universe. These songs, as they exist now, were born partly out of literal distance from her bandmates on the East Coast, and partly out of urgency to translate an emotional moment.
Emily wrote and recorded all 12 tracks in her Los Angeles home during the last, rainy months of 2018. After moving to California from New York a year prior, Emily found herself in a transformative time of self exploration and independence after leaving the many lives she knew of as home on the East Coast to start on a new journey. Living alone and separate from many of the things she once held most close, a deep dive into the dark void of the mind began. There is a metaphysical quality to the songs as they search for meaning in existence, swaying between the mundane and the spiritual. Emily believes deeply in the magic and connectedness of all things. The album Emily Alone is the creation of a self reflective lens through which we can view that omnipresence of love and life and the energy of all things around us as well as within us.
(Photo Credit: Carley Solether)
To wake up every morning and leave the shades down, pick a sweater, turn up the orange lights. Tea, headphones on a lot of the time, softest grey skies. To make an album of metaphysical music during the very short days of the wettest month in Los Angeles. Still not as humid as my body knows humidity, but humid enough to make the floor feel wet against my socks. The seasonal average 2018-2019 rainfall for LA was four inches above the average of 14.73 inches. The average yearly rainfall in Greene County, New York, where I am from, is 46 inches. What this means to me is that within difference, we can discover the comforting same.
As Alone as I am held by life and dreams and narration through tunnels which we travel, non-linear but memory and fear and beauty to be held in every moment your eyes are open and every moment they are closed too. Self-awareness came from self-pain and I ask over and over again is this thing that I dedicate my life to going to be the thing that rips warm arms wrapped around me away.
Or were they already there invisible.
Growth may never loosen its grip on the rope that pulls us through deciding what to leave and what to seek, but there is sunlight along the way. This is a young song written by someone who wrote those songs already and asks directly can I again again. A one flower bouquet, but it is a rare, wonderful flower lens through which you see why you are you and
Moon Begins now in Leo. You’ve never been fire and maybe you’ve never really known how to love yourself yet I mean by saying I am me and I need this and I love you but I love other things too and we can and will betray each other in wind. And now you look at yourself and you look into your eyes and you say death, and it means death, and not saying it or saying it will not undo the star-shaped void in your vision where whoever it is would be.
Follow a dark path along the edges it is so goddamn beautiful looking out.
Celebration when we find ourselves at the end of all things. Earth swallows us universe swallows earth void swallows universe we swallow void. We lived together in a magical home. I remember every ritual good morning I love you with a big bowl of greens and a fried egg, dog days sunset walking slow, no we won’t be sharing this life anymore, yes I came from a loving home, no I can’t remember everything, no I am not who you wanted me to be, yes I mourn her forever, yes I am sort of more free now that she’s gone. Yes I still cry about it, no I don’t wish anything was different. The constant three-part harmony rings loud and gorgeous and we find ourselves again in the garden going slow and welcoming all burials for the birth of new things. I Also Have Eyes that’s what I think when I look into yours or remember looking into anyone’s. I know we’re made up of the same dust and stuff and it’s so easy to forget and still I am not sure if I am not a tree laying supine somewhere remote and vast slowly drooping into earth’s gentle bed. A lot of this music asks our eyes if what we are seeing is where we really are.
Can we reach through the veil of realities and grab a small handful of air from someplace we are also alive?
Can we really feel the breath of that which no longer exists within these walls?
Some place where I didn’t make it past 2014, white light doorway pulled me in. Some place where mom was healthy and I’m not an artist. Repeat, repeat, spiral, sleep, repeat. But instead, somehow, I ended up here in Los Angeles and
now Ocean Arms hold me in a sunrise tide pool. Warm air agrees with me. I made a love song for the notion that we can reveal things to people in the form of light piercing out the windowed walls of our heart castles. I think that’s so cool. And its always “both and” not “either or” at least for me personally when it comes to these things of feeling love and apathy.
Don’t worry about time, Time Is A Dark Feeling, and the charm bracelet of your life in your mind is all drunken emotion, you are here, always right here.
Water cycle shows up with bells on. I still see things that maybe aren’t there, little reminders to keep dreaming and be here today but don’t forget that this gift of existence, pleasure and pain in human form is all but a weekend getaway and I do believe it is, if anything at all, a very interesting thing to think about.
M you are me
invisible
sci-fi
that force which gives so
Much power
everyone has one
a guiding
Light I’ll never stop writing songs about you Mother
you gave me that much
its a big much
Now birds become more common as the years go by. Instead of
picking up the pieces I find new pieces to meet. The channel of communication grows fainter
but hardens with a thicker layer of protection you know I
Look up at every single bird? I feel desire grow away from comfort and crawl toward caves
There where I find more interesting things.
In Southern California I sing a Rain Song I still
Dream about Western Massachusetts deep down I still dream
About the left hand side of your face with a scar but it has no scar
Anymore
It looked like a river
And Still my head turns toward sea
If it claimed me I
Would not be upset
I know there
Are deeper things
But I do
Just love the sound of
One or two guitars
And the
Feeling of water as it
Trickles down my spine
So comes now the Shadow Bloom after a long dredge in which shaded I accept the offerings of a mortal life. I can’t find the answers in the search but the search is why I’m alive and why I love waking up, I really do. Is there really anything better than looking forward to breakfast the night before? We live in spirit days, the hands that we get to touch, the moons we commit to memory. I am so sorry you feel pain. What experience I carry did not come from diving deeply and pulling down all my shades but from loving every you I’ve ever known and as always, duality. Today I’ll Have You Around as an accommodating statement of self-acceptance (a part of myself that sometimes hurts myself). Today I’ll Have You Around as a loving worship of life in the now (I love someone who I presently get to know). It does not end alone, it begins new together all with energy, a collaborative lattice in which we create together a vibrant and beautiful quilt to lay tired legs upon until the cycle begins again.
(Photo Credit: left, Carley Solether)
