Behind “Desert Land”
A year ago when the songs in Don’t Tell My Child went out into the wild, it was still a little too soon for me to write about the full story behind the (re-)writing of the eighth track on the album: Desert Land.
I had originally written this song as a more abstract exercise. After becoming a mother, I spent more time in our apartment than I ever had before, and I’d become intimately acquainted with the details of my room, the bed I had laid in so much to recover, to feed my child, to rest at her every nap, the blankets, the window…
I wanted to explore the poetry of my room, my daily ritual:
My first, my breath,
My when I wake up
My window, cracked for air
My night, my bed
My laying my head,
My comfort, dressed in white.
And I liked the song. It was nice. It was easy to sing.
Then in February 2020, everything in my world changed color when I found out I had had a miscarriage, and we’d lost our second child.
I had to go for an operation a week after we found out, and though the nurses had explained that the recovery should be very straightforward, you could probably go back to work tomorrow if you really had to — that was not the case for me. I was in a lot of pain, barely able to get out of bed for days and days.
I still remember that time vividly: the grief, the sadness, the confusion, the emptiness, the questions: what happened? What did I lose? Who did I lose? Where do I go from here?
I spent a couple of weeks in a blur of sleep, candy crush, and distracted dinners with my daughter. Then, despite not having fully recovered physically, I went back to the recording studio. It was where I wanted to be, because I couldn’t bear to stay in the emptiness of what I’d lost.
But I didn’t feel the same anymore. And some of the songs didn’t feel right anymore. They were now too simple. Too easy. And life did not feel simple and easy in those months.
I went back to the lyrics, to re-work them into something that felt true to where I now was.
The slow guitar pattern of this particular song felt like it was inviting me to pour my grief into it, and the setting of the bed in the room was right. And so, some of the then-meaningless lyrics gave way to new verses:
Two lines in pink
made December a joy,
you were coming
September the —
My stop, my pause,
my try-not-to-think,
my questions
that glow in the dark.
Your past, your now,
flood this desert land.
That was me. Barren and dry.
A lot of Christians think of the story of Job when facing grief and suffering: the story of the guy who lost absolutely everything (his wealth, his children, his health…) and sat in the dust wondering why the f*ck that had all happened. His friends were desperate to give answers, and came up with all kinds of moralistic or “spiritual” reasons. They made Job feel worse. Finally, a great voice came out of the whirlwind, spoke of all the mysteries in nature Job could never fathom, and Job and his friends fell silent to listen.
I came to this same story in my sadness. And I was struck that even though the great voice could have explained to Job the reasons behind his losses (just Satan wanting to test him 🙄), it doesn’t.
(Except to say that his friends were completely off.)
So even though Job has his fortune restored, lots more children — what is lost is lost, and all he can know is that there is oh-so-much he doesn’t know.
So unsatisfying.
Except strangely, I’ve also gradually come to find comfort in what I do not know. Being reminded of my smallness has somehow become oddly reassuring to me, but only because I believe in something oh-so-big.
I viscerally feel that the weight of knowing everything would be too much for me, but I can rest knowing someone who does know everything watches over me.
Job’s story didn’t take my sadness away, but it was one little piece that gave me something.
I don’t think it all happened for a reason — I think it just happened — but I see beauty in the music that came from it.
You spoke once from the storm and men fell still.
