When I was accepted into the Songwriter Residency at the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity back in December, I was totally thrilled (and a bit shocked if I’m honest). This was the third year of the program and I had applied the previous years with no luck. It was a lot of juggling and scheduling and coordinating, paired with a TON of patience and grace, understanding and encouragement from my husband, family and employers but I was able to make it work to attend.
I thought I would take the time to write about my experience in the Residency and blog along the way during the three weeks. Three WEEKS! It sounded like an insane amount of time, and yet here I am on the other end of it, back to work and I can’t believe it’s come and gone already.
I’m still trying to find the words to describe my experience – and as most of you who know me are well aware of – finding words is not usually a challenge for me. I like to talk. I like to write. I like to talk and write. However – I think I’m still working on how I feel about the whole thing. I do know this – it was the most decadent, luxurious and creatively fulfilling experience thus far in my journey of music and song. I went with a proposal to unpack grief and loss, and how it has affected me and my little family after losing our beautiful wonderful epic Regas Evangelos (my father in law) last year.
I definitely did that. I wrote about 10 songs about our experience of losing someone so dear, and about 5 songs outside of that experience (a few fun love songs, a song about my Grandma who we also lost this past November). I had time in the studio to record three demos, I did a lot of yoga, I did a lot of listening. It was honestly spectacular in so many ways.
Now I’m back to the real world and I anticipate a second wave of songs to come to me after I’ve eased back into my day to day life. So for now, here are a few photos from my time at the Banff Centre. I hope with all my heart one day I get to go back. <3
