Liz Lawrence

Vespers is out in full today.

I called this collection of songs Vespers because it is solemn, I think of the sun dipping behind the horizon and it being time for prayer, for reflection, for gratitude, for grief. I think often of the poem “Go to the Limits of your Longing” by Rilke which grasps at my chest each time I read it “let everything happen to you, beauty and terror” and in death there is both.

I want you to listen to it because it is true and because I am sharing it with you. I’ve been thinking recently about the nature of being an artist, what it means to suffer and share, to drink up and spit out life in that way. It reminds me of the game where you’re shown a tray of objects and have to quickly memorise them to then recite as many things as you can remember when they are placed under a cloth. But also to be as if under a cloth, a disguised object expressing the outline of something “flare up like a flame and make big shadows I can move in”

I will not shy away from the seriousness of this moment in my life, as much as I want to make light of it, to move on quickly, to remove discomfort. For now I am going to sit in this place, which is dark and painful, and it will not overwhelm me. I feel the need to get to know it, as all of us will get to know it, as everyone has known it, in the entire history of humanity.

Life is bewildering but this feeling is ancient, smoother, turned like a stone in the hands of many people. The more I know it, the more easily it sits beside me in my life, which I am grateful for beyond measure.

Sincerely yours, Liz Lawrence

RSVP to hear Vespers in full before its release: lizl.lnk.to/BCE

The album will be played through in real time on Bandcamp at 8pm, next Wednesday 3rd June.