Dear 2024

I just found this video looking through moments from this past year, and I can’t get over how much I love this Patty Griffin song. It’s an embodiment of resilience. I read that she wrote it inspired by Martin Luther King's famous 1968 speech, "I've Been Up to the Mountaintop”… what a beautiful thing to write a song about. You can feel the resonance of a generational hope in every note in this song.

We found this piano in a back corner of a dressing room in Evanston, IL and climbed over stacks of folding chairs to get to it. We had some time to kill after sound check and I’d been wanting to run this song, rehearsing for a show of Patty Griffin songs we did in Nashville for fun. It was one of my favourite shows I’ve ever played. Patty Griffin songs have often held up a flashlight for me in my life. It’s like they open a door and at a glance, lyrically I often don’t know what they mean, but I know how I feel when I hear them. A transcendence. I think that’s what I’m chasing when I write music. I’m looking for ways to hold the door open for myself and for anybody else. The specific details of a lyric don’t matter. The feeling they carry does. This song carries a powerful one and it made me smile finding this rehearsal clip and I thought I’d share it here.

“I went up to the mountain, because you asked me to…” This year has felt a lot like climbing a mountain side and there were moments where I just sat on the rocks stuck in my fear and felt myself swinging pretty low. We all talk about the view from the top of what we’re working towards but I think it’s good to talk about the part where you look out right where you are, struggling and sweaty and a little lost and broken and just take in the view from there. A surrender in a way. I’m trying to get better at that. I love everything about what this song says and something about it brings me to a sense of home and a sacred peace inside… Hope it brings you a little of that today too wherever you are.

I’m really grateful you guys are reading what I’m sharing here. It feels good to have a place to be able to say more. I just started this a few months ago and it’s been helpful fuel in my creative tank. Thank you for your time and your comments and your conversations. I look forward to sharing the adventures of next year with you. Also including a little poem below from my reflecting on 2024.

From one wandering soul to another, I hope you know you’re loved as you are.

<3 T

Dear 2024,

You sanded my edges.

Some a little too far, and some not enough.

You gave me back the keys and waited for me to take them in my own hands.

You challenged the pictures I painted in my mind and taught me that if I squint my eyes and tilt my head, I can still see something beautiful.

You were relentless with changes.

You shook the fruit from the trees and it scared me to see it all falling on the ground but I’m learning how to enjoy what is meant for each season and how to let go.

You asked hard questions.

You invited in the uncomfortable and you kept knocking when I didn’t want to answer the door.

You were patient.

You reminded me I am not defined by my highs or my lows and the equation will always amount to enough even when I don’t believe it.

You brought me a community that lifted my spirits when they needed lifting the most.

You were a funny little trip.

I still hate endings but I think I’m getting better at goodbye and I’m ready to see you go.

Thank you for all the ways you shaped and pushed and broke and mended and glued and grew and changed me.