The story behind Take Care
I started writing the chorus for Take Care in the shower (which sounds like a boring cliché, but… it’s true!). It was one of those rare moments where the lyrics and melody arrived almost fully formed, and I was able to translate them into an actual playable song with a guitar in my hands.
It sounds like it’s a song about saying goodbye, but it’s really a song about taking care of yourself. I started thinking about how people say “Take care!” when you depart. I like the idea of taking the “care” with you more literally.
While I was working on writing the songs for this EP, Owen suggested “What if you tried writing songs like you write your zines?” This was a groundbreaking concept for me. I had always thought of my books/zines/art projects as something totally different than songwriting, but they aren’t! I stole some lines from my previous zines, including my mini zine Temporary, which I expanded into an illustrated poem in Stardust. I’ve really gotten a lot of creative mileage out of that little bitty zine!
The line “Take care, my love, it’s not easy — bravely facing everything that breaks your heart” is inspired by Sophie Lucido Johnson’s sign off for her newsletter “You’re Doing a Good Enough Job” where she writes, “Good luck out there, bravely facing all that breaks your heart.” I love how this line makes me feel wistful and strangely optimistic. It is a brave act to take care of yourself in a world that breaks your heart. And I think it’s really important, especially in the face of so many difficult things, to keep pointing to all the beautiful things around us.
As we were finishing up the recording for this song (after crying in the vocal booth multiple times!), Owen asked me what I was going to call the album, and I joked, “I feel like I should call it “songs that make me cry!” He instantly said, “YES! That’s perfect!” I felt silly about it at first, but it’s the most honest and accurate title I could think of, and eventually it just felt right.