Florence made me do it!
This is an appreciation post for Florence + the Machine.
I can’t say enough about how much Florence Welch’s lyrics and music have inspired my artwork since 2021. At the same time, I struggle to put into words something that is so visceral and beyond my ability to articulate.
When I’m stuck, I dance to Florence. When I feel crazy, I remember that Florence has a lot of songs about mental illness, or that are thinly veiled references to her struggles with alcohol and anxiety. Several of my paintings since 2021 have been named directly from lyrics from Florence + the Machine songs. I don’t know how many, I haven’t bothered to count. It’s probably an embarrassing number.
One night this winter, I was sitting at work, listening to How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful, an album from 2015 that I didn’t even really discover until 2023. Actually, most nights this winter I listened to that album— It has been instrumental in putting together my current body of work. During a slow moment I scribbled down the titles to five paintings, just from that album. Two additional titles came from other F+TM songs.
I have three versions of Dance Fever downloaded on my phone right now. Just this week, I downloaded The Complete Version, which includes a bonus song and three poems. In the infinite wisdom of the Creator who gives me the inspiration and ability to create, this bonus song came to me when I needed it, when I needed a title for one final piece. “Mermaids” is the perfect bridge between How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful and Dance Fever, and now all twelve paintings have titles.
“I am no mother, I am no bride…“
This painting from my Ophelia series (2023) is titled with a lyric from the Dance Fever album song “King.”
One of the other songs that has made a huge impact is “Never Let Me Go,” but specifically the live performance at Madison Square Garden during the Dance Fever world tour. As an introduction to the song, Florence addressed the audience for about a minute and a half, saying that she didn’t ever plan to sing the song again, because it was from a time when she was very sad and very drunk, but her fans kept listening to it, and she said, “and that has been the way way, for the past fifteen years of making songs: everything that I have tried to push away, every part of me that I thought was too broken or messy, if I put it in a song, you always brought it back to me with love, and allowed me to see it in a different way. So as a thank you to everyone who has been with us for the last fifteen years, I wanted to start playing it again.” (emphasis mine)
When I say that I wept, I am not exaggerating. Hearing her share that vulnerable moment was healing, and that, I think, is the difference between artists and entertainers.
The pieces in this upcoming body of work may be dark, and tense, and raw. But I am healing. I am going to be okay. I am much more okay than I was fifteen years ago.
And that is the story of my art— everything I used to push away, the parts I thought were too broken or too messy? When I share them with you, we can see them in a different way. We can hold multiple truths, witness them with love, strengthen our connections.
So I’m listening to Dance Fever again after taking a break from it (between my partner and I, we have listened to it at least 200 times. at least). And the sharing, the reciprocal practice of this artmaking, right now in this very minute of this moment in history, feels at once so small and yet so necessary. I wasn’t going to send a newsletter or write a blog this week. but Florence made me do it. It’s these words, from her, that I will leave with you, as the reason; as my love letter; as my final note on the difference between artists and entertainers:
Is this how it is?
Is this how it's always been?
To exist in the face of suffering and death
And somehow still keep singing
Oh like Christ up on a cross
Who died for us? Who died for what?
Oh, don't you wanna call it off?
But there's nothing else that I know how to do
But to open up my arms and give it all to you
