PJ
PJ is a writer and musician with the band Bug Teeth.
They lost their mum Pennie in 2021.
“It’s painful to perform and record these songs. Even just reading the lyrics makes me want to cry.
I feel like it has to be cathartic otherwise I wouldn’t do it. There is a sense where it makes me feel more in control of my grief. Even closer to my mum, in a way.
I really want people to hear the words and understand why. But it’s not an easy thing to do.
I think you can pretend to ignore pain but it’s going to come out somewhere. At least we can choose to get it out. That’s a good and bad thing about being an artist, I guess.
I don’t really know what anyone else does. For me I guess it feels like the only way.
Mum died in June and I was due to start a Masters in September. I was lucky I had something definite to propel me forward. In my head, I was doing all right.
I very much treated it as a background thing. I remember feeling embarrassed whenever I had to drop the ‘my mum just died’ bomb.
I think it’s just too much for your brain to process. You have to turn it outwards; to focus on what other people are feeling looking at your situation rather than how you feel because it’s too hard.
I find songwriting quite different to prose. But I definitely reuse the same ideas and images, like the way light looks on a wall.
Grief found a way in, even when I wasn’t writing intentionally about it.
We’d booked a recording session and we only had one song ready. We really needed another one and I think I came up with lyrics on the spot.
The band didn’t know it was a griefy song when we were writing it together. We’d only played it in basements where no one could really hear what I was saying.
The boys said it was really emotional. As soon as I started singing that’s what it was all about - the actual event of losing my mum.
My first purpose is for me. I don’t mean that in a selfish way. But I’m writing these songs about my very specific experience and the intention is for me to understand that. I feel like I’m learning about grief all the time.
I love the idea that it connects with people - and while that’s not why I do it, it’s one of the better things to come out of it.
“Grief found a way in, even when I wasn’t writing intentionally about it. ”
Landscaping
Unspeakable time / Backs folded together / separate sides
Doors closing to meet us / And we try / We found ourselves through pictures
All at once / It happened / It came about / A flash in the pan
And all at once / We cut it out / Tried to live around / What happened
Landscaping / Take the background / Womb shadowed / From her to mine / In this life / She’s my background / I’d cut her out / But she’s mine
I think grief will always be part of my work.
At the moment - and the reason why I’m writing a whole album about grief - I can’t see past it. I want the process of writing and releasing it to be a step towards understanding it more completely.
I can only hope that it’s not going to feel like this in future. That I don’t need to process it as much.
It’s learning, isn’t it, the act of creation? It’s educating ourselves. I hope it’s not going to be my only focus. But grief just carries on happening, doesn’t it?”