I started writing songs on the piano when I was 15, then switched to focusing more on production-based music around age 18. Of all the 60-odd songs I now have out on Spotify, not one of them is a song that started on the keys. I think I judged this genre as basic, boring, predictable...I don't know, I just judged it, and myself. Like this part of my expression didn't fit into who or how I wanted to be anymore, so I just kind of left it behind.

So many of the spiritual mentors I listen to talk about creativity so often, and I suddenly realized damn...I wasn't even weaving creation into my daily. Over years of hustle and ambition, I had developed a largely extractive relationship with my creativity, where I was using this magical ability to appease my sense of productivity, rather than to express the complex experience I was having. So I pulled out my keyboard again the other week, and wanted to share this song that I started 10 days ago.

It's so healing to be seen by me, and through the process of songwriting: inviting the articulation of what is truest, through melody, harmony, and lyrics. This feels like the beginning of a new era...I'm curious to bring some of these piano songs into the studio and build the production out with the experience I have now. (Like how have I never really DONE that !?)

I wanted to mint this lil home video as my final NFT of 2022; which will always be the year I dropped my first NFT! See the working lyrics below, and my artist's notes in [brackets] explaining my train of thought and feeling throughout this composition.

Blessings, Forrest.

Sinewave Seedling :: working lyrics

VERSE 1 Time keeps leaving One day I’ll have no more of it Sine wave seedling I used to let the sound of silence win [used to stew in silence instead of make music]

PRE-CHORUS It felt like nothing I did Would ever forgive The crime I was inside [anyone else been wayyyy too hard on themself?] It felt like nothing I was Would ever expunge The crime I was inside my mind

CHORUS Mi-i-i-ind In my mind

POST-CHORUS Could never forgive

VERSE 2 Carefree convict My aspirations sneaking in [I dreamed of rest, peace, and carefreeness, including in my creative practice, yet was so addicted to productivity that I felt imprisoned by it] Deathbed daydream Meeting the journey’s bittersweet end [anyone else ever daydreamed of death?]

PRE-CHORUS Revealing all that I did I’ve seen and forgiven No crime I was inside [and perhaps upon death, we realize there was nothing wrong with us in the first place; that we were always enough] Uncovering all that I was Was equally loved The crime was inside my mind [that our "wrongness" was only ever a figment of our imagination]

CHORUS Mi-i-i-ind In my mind

POST-CHORUS I’ll finally forgive me.

BRIDGE What if I don’t have to wait for the sun to set Or the dust to settle on my deathbed [or perhaps I don't need to wait for death for this to be realized] We don’t have to wait for the tides to rise And the seas to lead us to our demise What if I don’t have to wait for the sun to set Or the dust to settle on my deathbed We don’t have to wait for the tides to rise And the seas to eat us, our last goodbye [perhaps we can realize this now, before climate catastrophe takes us]

CHORUS Inside my Mi-i-i-ind In my mind [mindset switch up: peace is now. we are enough now.]

POST-CHORUS We’ve already been forgiven For all that we are.