I recently had a health scare that has got me thinking. Wow, we really have very little without our health. This may sound cliché but it is seriously true. I've spent the better part of a week - with a few days to go - almost entirely confined to my apartment. After three days of a wicked fever and unbearable swelling and throat pain - I decided it was time to call for reinforcements. My friend Eva picked me up in a taxi and we went to the local Hospital Italiano - one of the nicest, private hospitals in the city. Yes - it was a bit more expensive than a public hospital - but at that point in time - I wasn't messing around.
Just as I expected the throat specialist told me that it was a viral infection and that I should go home and eat a lot of ice cream to help the swelling. Not entirely worth $110 pesos that consultation. Good part was she wrote me a prescription which I took to a local pharmacy where a cute little old lady stuck a GINORMOUS needle in my "cola" - I was so desperate she could have been shooting me up with heroine, however it was a steroid injection which pretty much saved my life - or at least brought the swelling down and put me on the road to recovery.
I am back on track and will be heading into the studio this Thursday to resume work on the album. The week before last we laid down pre-production tracks for our TENTH song... It's really coming along.
I have been musing recently about the pure serendipitous nature of life. Being a songwriter I suppose it's sort of a built-in process. Here are my thoughts:
Beautiful, heart-melting moments happen - they do. They move us, shape us, make us shake with glee and cry from passion...Terrible things happen, we feel the floor disappear from beneath us and we find ourselves catapaulting into the darkest of depths. We experience the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. This is the gift of being human and having the opportunity to live a life on this earth.
In my case - there have been so many days in which I have cried over change, loss and fear and wondered how those things could possibly have a positive outcome in my life. And I am in this magical point in my life right now where I can see clearly that every moment leading up to this one as I am sitting at my computer writing this to you - have been part of an intricate and beautiful patchwork quilt - that work of art is my life and I wouldn't change a single moment of it.
If I had never experienced love as profoundly as I have then my sense of loss upon the end of that love wouldn't have been as real, poignant, painful, or inspiring.
The love was necessary and beautiful and real.
If the love had never ended, I would have never been given a reason to write about how beautiful it was or to sing about how much I miss it, or to cry in song about my journey towards finding myself - alone - in this world.
I don't know where these songs will go - who will hear them, take solace in them, find them comforting and relatable - but I do know that this process of recording this album is the most natural and honest thing I have ever done in my life.
There is no marketing strategy or attempts to make my voice sounds a certain way - it's just me singing about things that have happened to me - things that made my cup overflow with emotion. Happy things, sad things, hopeful things....
It is the over-spill - that is what Real Joy is made up of.
I can't wait to share it with you.
From my heart to yours.
Tiffany Joy
