By Siobhan O’Brien

 

There have been times when I have reflected on when I changed. It doesn’t ever seem to be any one time or moment. During these COVID TIMES, there is no denying we are all changing, whether we like it or not, whether we embrace it or feel tethered to change.

I moved from Ireland three years ago to “find my audience.” After writing, recording and financing my new record, You Can’t Run Out Of Love, and living out of a suitcase with no home (except for great friends generously hosting me), I look back and know that I have changed. Through this angst-ridden roller coaster ride, I have often questioned my choices. But my gut always brings me back to my original path. People often say, “It’s the journey that’s important.” I want to stick pins in their eyes, and shout, “No! I WANT THE END RESULT. Why can’t I start another journey???” In reality, the moments that stick with you are those struggles through “the journey.” A pain in the ass, isn’t it?

Here’s what I do know… I have realized to get to the top of my game, to find my audience, to feel successful, I can’t do ANYTHING else but GIVE 200% emotionally, mentally, spiritually and physically to my craft. For me, that also meant sacrificing being with my son, my family and friends back in Ireland.

Just the other day I found myself saying, “If I can make some masks, I can make some money to create my music videos…” Then I stop and think, “NO, I can’t put making masks first – I’m not starvin’ yet!” I still have to prioritize my music even though I am down to a virtual tip jar once a week.

My father was an athlete and always came from a team mindset. He treated me like I was a team member. He had me join a swim team when I was 8. I became a provincial champion at 11 in front crawl, back crawl and breaststroke. He used to say to me, “You gotta get through the pain barrier. You gotta grasp the nettle!” Words for grown men to understand, let alone an 11-year-old girl.

When I was 18, my parents shipped me off to the south of France to “get me away from a boy.” I had just started gigging at that point. I saw Tracy Chapman performing on French national TV, along with Bruce Springsteen, Sting and Youssou N’Dour for an Amnesty International Benefit Concert. Tracy blew me away and I wrote a letter home to my father and told him, “I, from this day on, am gonna be a singer,” and I hoped I could live up to being some kind of a songwriter. Years later when I told him I had enough and couldn’t do it anymore, he said, “Well, maybe it’s time I got that letter out again!”

I have always wondered if I had this ambition all on my own or was I doing it for other reasons. To please my father? or my mother? Or to be accepted? Or be popular? I now realize that all of that is hogwash because your soul would never allow you to do something for so long without a reason.

I know I am very hard on myself but it always comes down to THIS: what I’m trying to do is bigger than I am. Every time I say I’ll stop, I’ll give up, I did enough, my whole body disagrees. When I think of never singing again, I feel physically debilitated. My body and soul know better.

We are incrementally and cumulatively changing all the time. COVID is just ramping it up. Now we have to evolve more quickly…and we can!

I wrote this song after witnessing the evolution of our species right in front of my eyes. We’re having to overcome and adapt at lightning speed. Here’s “I Changed”.

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