Sunday Scaries, 01

It’s one thing to perform. It’s another to be heard — truly heard — through your own songs.

As a creative whose practice spans mediums far and wide, music has ebbed and flowed through my priorities, only ever hitting that prized top spot at one point in my life: when preparing for my Year 8 Musician of the Year competition. (Which I won, may I add…). My lyrics are good. This I know for certain. I’ve been publishing my essays and poetry in print and online for well over a year now. Well received by peers and professionals alike, I’ve grown in confidence and have started to share more and more of my work. Even my most personal of prose. But. As soon as line turns to lyric, metaphor to melody, an immense amount of anxiety envelops me. I am a self-proclaimed perfectionist. There is no doubt about that. And — obvious yet important to note — I am not naive. Let’s be real: the first single I release will in no way, shape, or form be my best. I need to remember it won’t be my last either. Maybe it’s because I have a slight fascination with legacy. With the idea of sowing seeds with no expectation of reaping the benefits of your labour. Planting seeds in the knowledge that they will flourish in your absence. Future generations will be the ones to harvest your crop. An acceptance of the long game. I divulge. Back to music.

There is no excuse now. I am a master of procrastination. Of productive procrastination…which helps me justify avoiding what I need to get done even more. Not good. Bad habits. I moved house a few weeks ago and was using that as an excuse to self-justify the lack of notes and clefs in my papers. I’ve got a lovely new “nine-to-five” all lined and ready to go in mid-August. So. The clock is ticking.

Why have I frozen up? Why can I not finish a single fucking song? I dance around picking line for line from different songs across different albums — for all of which I have the lyrics set and ready to go. So why can’t I just buck up? Pick one song. Work on it. Why can’t I even start? Music is an interesting medium. I’ve always thought that. When something is too painful to express through words or visual medium alone, an artist turns to song. Is this why I’m struggling so much? Because what I’m writing about is too painful to process, so I’m holding out on actualising its composition to avoid difficult feelings? I think not. If anything, this thought needs to be turned on its head. I like to stew on things too much. Maybe I’m stalling so I can sit in my hurt for longer. Once the song/album is done and published, that’s it. No more wallowing in self-pity. The work complete — it’ll be time to move on. I don’t want to move on. I want to sit in pain and hurt and anger. Not in a “Let’s hold a grudge” way in a “I want to intellectualise this situation to the nth degree as a coping strategy” kinda way. Even writing this blog post is part of the procrastination. Like I said: a master.

I used to spend hours sitting at the piano when I was about nine or ten, composing song after song after song. Writing up the scores and singing along too. There’s a kind of child-like fascination in working with a new medium that I need to learn to fall back in love with. I’ve gotten too comfortable. Children are fearless. As children, we had not yet learnt to withhold the attitudes and opinions of others. We had a love for life that is just inconceivable for adults in this broken world.

I was a lonely child. I struggled a lot with friendships. I spent a lot of time alone. It was hard. Looking back on it now, though, I do appreciate what that time in life has given me. The time alone I used to develop an immense creative skill set, all of which I still carry with me today. The time alone won me an art scholarship to my secondary school. The time alone gave me the courage to be comfortable in my own company. Not only comfortable, but to find a love for it and myself, unlike any other. That’s probably why I still struggle with relationships — platonic, romantic, and familial — to this day. I love myself too much. I don’t stand for shit. The lesson I hold dearest to my heart from my childhood is that of resilience. It’s for this reason — I think — that some people struggle to understand me. I am a very private person. But, because I share my art and writing with strangers and friends alike, I’m sure people would beg to differ. There’s some sort of weird para-social relationship developing between me and my Instagram followers. But the issue is with the few of my Instagram followers who know me in person. People see me posting my work online and assume they know what’s going on in my life, and so they don’t bother to message me directly or to ask to meet in person for a catch-up. What I post online is very curated and purposeful. Fuck. I mean. I fooled everyone a month or so ago. Online, I spun a web of lies suggesting that I was abroad in Berlin for a week or two. Well…in fact, I was in hospital in London. The defences are up. That I admit. Anyone who messaged me to ask where I was and what I was up to, I obviously told about my little game. What I’m struggling to get my head around with this is: old friends have now become followers. Full stop. There is a comfort in knowing they are interested in my work. There is also a heart-wrenching pang every time I see someone view my story whom I am secretly praying will reach out to me directly. You might ask, “Phoebe, why wouldn’t you just message them first?”. Well, well, well, my friends, foes and follies: that seems to be what I have spent my entire life doing. I’m over it. It got real boring real quick. About a year ago I decided to turn the tables and stop begging for an ounce of people’s time. I must admit: it was pretty humiliating. No matter. It’s their turn now. Time to graft bitches.

Anyway, to link back to the point I was making: I have just over two weeks until I start my new job. I have the time. I have the lyrics. I have the concept. There is no excuse. I will have one single completed by the time I start my new job, or else…That’s a threat to myself and myself alone. Pick a song to work on. Stick to it. Sit with the discomfort. The feeling of being out of my depths in a medium I am yet to master, and just do it.

In other news, this is a new series of blog posts I want to upload every Sunday. To reflect upon the week gone by and set my intentions for the impending one. Working for yourself is hard. There’s no one to hold you accountable except yourself. Deadlines slip. Distractions hit you left, right, and centre. Interest peaks as sales trough. It’s hard, grueling and brutal stuff. Soul-destroying at times, I may be so dramatic as to say. But — for me — it’s working. The ball’s been rolling since 2019 and keeps somehow gathering more and more ideas along with more and more intrigue.

The Sunday just gone began at my friend’s house in Camden. Curled up together on the sofa watching Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” until the early hours of the morning. Conversation sparked about a themed 21st birthday and a collection I designed in 2022 which never came to fruition. A collection which it seems I need to pick back up and dust right off, for I have many an event coming up which I want to actualise my old designs for. Least of all Halloween. That’s my short-term project I’ll be chipping away at in terms of functional sculptures and wearable art. Sidenote: I’m not a designer. I’m an artist. A touchy subject, if you couldn’t tell by the phrasing above. Keep your eyes peeled for snippets of the process//developments there.

Looking forward to next week: you know, probably for the first time in years, I have no set plans for the week ahead. I have an offer to go somewhere out of town over the weekend, which I’m slightly apprehensive about, but it would probably be a good anti-anxiety exercise to go and prove to myself that it’s not such a big deal. I’ll explain the situation in more detail in next week’s piece.

The NHS is fucked. Talking therapy is a nine-to-twelve-month wait. So, instead, I’m confessing my sins to my notebooks. I get through about two every three or four days, so there’s evidently a lot to unpack here…My brain is a mess. My neurology is fucked and my body’s broken so I’m doing really well for 21 years of age(!!). I’m just sitting on the Thames now finishing up this piece. Next Saturday I’m launching another drop of my AW20 twenty-five collection so I’ve got a few final bits to play around with there before I photograph everything. I’m super proud of this series of works; it’s probably my best drop yet. It’s always encouraging to see the progression month on month in my work, to take note of the different ways of visually and physically portraying my ideas. I think the next drop will be back to textiles. Probably some embroidered t-shirts and so on….We’ll see where my imagination takes me. Until next time!!! Phoebe xoxo

Written on 27/07/2025, Edited and Published: 30/07/2025.