Shortly after my 30th birthday in October 2023, I received a birth chart reading—a gift from a dear friend. The reader spoke to me about my chart, then asked what I was doing around the time of the spring equinox. I told them I would be in England to visit my best friend, the one I call my sister, and also take a trip across the north of England with my mum. It would be the first time we would be there together since my Dad had passed away 10 years ago. The reader told me it was going to be magic, said they don’t usually mention dates but that March 20 or 21st something special would happen. They told me it will be the spring time of your life.

Fast forward a few months and I’m knee-deep in applications—festivals, grants, programs—writing all the things that come with being a self-employed artist. It’s never easy distilling your efforts to a page, but it’s just something you learn to do. I bit my tongue and applied for things I thought I’d never get, sending them off with my usual prayer and then did my best to follow my Dad’s advice: forget about them and keep moving.

In early March I got on a plane to London. The views flying over England always spark something in me– rolling green fields for miles– memories of my heartland. The clouds parted over the city as we landed and I took the tube to Whitechapel. Walking up the road along Weavers Fields I felt the humidity and warmth, snowdrop buds lining the sidewalks, a far cry from Montreal. Spring was just beginning.

Over the next week, I’d travel across England with my mum, taking in the quiet beauty of winter giving way to spring. We visited the cottage where my grandparents once lived, where I spent childhood Christmases and summers, walked to the majestic oak tree in the field behind their home, climbed the hill to the Beacon (yes–that Beacon), left roses at their grave. One evening, I walked to the oak tree alone, wondering if my Dad might be there with me. I sensed he wasn’t—that he was with my brother instead. Later, when I saw my mum, she told me she had just got off the phone with my brother. He’d had the most vivid dream about our Dad. As if somehow, I already knew.

Our next stop was Whitby, on the North-West coast of England. I had been here as a child, and remembered it only by an ancient glass bottle my mother had bought in an antique shop. I’d managed to convince her that we would do the 7 mile coastal walk from Whitby to Robin Hood’s Bay. On March 19th the clouds miraculously parted and we set off, climbing the 199 steps to Whitby Abbey, and then thousands more along the cliff-side. Daffodils bloomed, lambs danced in the fields; on one side the North Sea, and on the other, fields rolling for miles. I felt that I had never seen such beauty, and I remembered the spring time of your life.

The next day the sky was dark, a fine mist in the air. Again we climbed the 199 steps, this time to see the great medieval ruins of Whitby Abbey; a popular destination, made known as the setting in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. We roamed the grounds alone in the mist, the abbey’s Gothic archways looming above us.

From Whitby we took a train to Durham, where my father had studied at University, and his friends still live. I grew up spending time there, often during the Miners Gala, when brass bands would parade through the streets, and a fair would be set up in the field. Happy memories of drifting to sleep in the attic while my parents and their old friends drank wine and listened to music downstairs, late into the night. We stay with Lynda and Steve in their magical home– the only comparison I can make is to The Burrow in Harry Potter– seemingly never-ending with so many nooks to get lost in, and ever so British.

Upon arriving in Durham, we were welcomed into their home, just as I remember it, tea and biscuits served as prisms danced across the walls of the living room. It was there I checked my email, finding out that I had been selected to be the 2024 resident at Canada’s National Music Centre. The date was March 21.

I remember that week so vividly, as if it were the first time I truly experienced spring. I remember my relatives and family friends telling me how much I reminded them of my Dad; how in Canada there’s no one to tell me those things. I felt inspired in a way that I’d long been missing, open to life and its endless possibilities.

That week and those views have carried me through the lower parts of this winter. Following that trip I sought interest in Celtic mythology, and the histories that lie in those landscapes. I have always been drawn to the monuments that line the British countryside, incorporating them into my musical world: the Beacon of course, then the stone circle (miraculously a 2h drive from Montreal) found in the Ideas of Space music video.

Now, as I slowly finish the music that will make up my next record, I am beginning to understand the world it inhabits, and the visual world I will create to accompany it. It looks like those days in Whitby: clear skies against rolling hills, mist, greens and greys, ancient ruins, daffodils, monoliths, dark water below the cliffs, terracotta aqueducts.

As I continue (somehow) making records, you’d think the process would get easier. It doesn’t. There’s loss, isolation, fear—in trying to shape a singular sonic identity while building a visual world around it. I’ve never been someone who works on music every day; I need long stretches away to return with the clarity needed to finish a song. Still, I wrestle with the fear of becoming irrelevant, of falling out of sync with an industry that expects constant output. Releasing an album every 4 years does not adhere to the capitalist structures of the music industry, and I feel that weight. I become entangled in those thoughts, sometimes making me want to turn away from the work entirely.

It is not easy to process time while you are in it. I can now look back on that trip to England and see how much it inspired this next album. However in my current state it feels impossible to think that this time, in all its isolation and sadness, could also hold meaning.

Learn to deal with the valleys, the peaks will take care of themselves.

The sun shines this morning in Montreal. I carry the tulips from room to room.

I’m back to England in June, this time for the solstice.

Updates

• I released new music on April 10. Deep Breath is the collaboration between myself and Hugo Bernier - you can find Inhale / Exhale on Bandcamp and on streaming platforms.

• I continue to make mixes as SSURROUNDSS (my record label) on Montreal’s community radio station n10.as. You can listen to them here.

• Turkish independent magazine Bant Mag asked me to do an interview– this I was very grateful for (sometimes I forget I make photographs) you can see view it here.

Reading: Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd, A Thousand Threads: A Memoir - Neneh Cherry

Listening: Entourage - Ceremony of Dreams: Studio Sessions & Outtakes, 1972-1977. Tony Price - Visage. Maria Somerville - Luster. NTS always.

Enjoying: Sunlight whenever possible

Thank you for reading xx

tess