Welcome to the tenth day of Pass it to the Left’s ‘Artist Series!’ We have invited amazing artists and musicians to share their work with us, as well as their thoughts on their art, their music, social change, and community. Enjoy!
by Ivette Meow
“Music is the healer no matter who you are” – Bajka in ‘Walk in the Sky’ by Bonobo
People who know me or who have met me usually say that I’m a pretty happy and relaxed person, but I have not always been this way. Like some people I’ve had my share of dark days in my childhood, growing up as the ‘paper girl’ in the wealthy neighbourhood of West Vancouver. While a simple paper route seems pretty normal for kids growing up, my paper delivery experience was actually a whole family operation. I’ll spare you all the details and just mention that this started when I was five, continued for ten years, and for most of it we stuffed and delivered over 2000 papers, three nights a week, and occasionally even more during early mornings. Towards the end of it I realized that I had a unique opportunity to develop a deeper appreciation of liberty, joy, and independence, in comparison to the stressful and oppressive lifestyle that I was experiencing. This is when I began to write poetry.
Poetry was my outlet for recording personal reminders of the small joys and simple pleasures to help me deal with the negativity in my life. Songwriting was a natural progression of writing poetry that allowed me to connect to a larger audience. Highly influenced by Tool, Incubus, and Rage Against The Machine, I had begun to realize the power of conveying important messages and generating strong emotions through lyrics. I decided that I wanted to connect to listeners through themes of inspiration, wisdom, and positivity. I had heard too many mediocre songs about love, sadness, heartache, and relationships that made me want to avoid writing those type of songs. Instead I found it more challenging to write lyrics that were able to inspire people to think, change, and grow. And if I’m not able to inspire people through my lyrics I wanted to at least show how I was inspired through the stories that I tell.
