THE LIGHT (Track 4)
How a single demo became my lifeline in the rough seas of early motherhood
THE LIGHT is Track 4 on RADIATE, my latest record which transformed me as an artist and a person through the process of writing, recording, and releasing it.
If you’re just joining me here on this Substack and would like to “catch up”…
I told the story of how RADIATE came to me / came to be HERE.
I dove into INVITING (Track 1), my Fairy Godmother Anthem, HERE.
I explored ENOUGH (Track 2), my Fiery Ode to The Feminine HERE.
I journeyed through the title track, RADIATE (Track 3), the chronicle of my creative (r)evolution, HERE
In honor of cyclical living (and my schedule as a busy mom), I’ve been taking my time exploring each song on this record over on my Instagram, and then collecting those pieces here on Substack as a sort of digest. If you’d like to follow along on Instagram in real time, I do share some timely wisdom related to each song through the lens of the astrology of the moment, since I align the beginning of each new Song Cycle with a full moon...and let me say, I’ve been delightfully unsurprised by how synchronistically the theme of each song dovetails with the cosmic guidance every month. #divinetiming
Such was the case when I launched the Song Cycle for THE LIGHT. If you love astrology, you know that each month the Moon reaches her fullness in the sign that opposes the Sun, and that polarity always has something to teach us. Smack in the middle of Aries season (which is a fiery sign of independence and pioneering courage and marks the Zodiacal New Year when it begins on the Spring Equinox, calling our attention to themes of rebirth, renewal, and transformation), the Libra Full Moon occured on April 12 and brought a sense of culmination and heightened emotions. The symbol for Libra is the scales of justice, so this particular Full Moon was perhaps inviting us to consider where things might be off balance, especially on the Aries—Libra axis, where there is often a negotiation between personal needs and the needs of others, between autonomy and dependence.
What does this have to do with my song, you ask? Stay with me.
THE LIGHT was the first song that I wrote after my son Luca was born in 2017 (though not until he was about a year old), and it was the only song that I would write in the first 3 years of his life, so it became a kind of lifeline for me during that time, helping me cling to any sense of creative identity in the ocean of early parenthood.
As I learned the hard way during that postpartum time (but have only been able to reflect on in hindsight), there is a subtle yet insidious irony in the glorious creative explosion that occurs during matrescence relative to the time one has to channel that energy into anything tangible (aside from raising a small human, of course). And because our culture glorifies the mother as martyr, I personally had to do a lot of conscious unlearning to make peace with the fact that I needed alone time, space to do things for myself, and an independent identity from the aforementioned small human before I could even consider feeling relaxed enough to welcome in my previously-beloved connection with The Muse.
Many life lessons such as this aren’t learned unless and until one experiences the kind of utter discontentment that prompts real change. My postpartum rock bottom happened to coincide with (and was likely at least partially fueled by) the global dumpster fire that was 2020. In another instance of reflective hindsight, I know now that the pandemic actually provided the time and space that encouraged me toward my creative (r)evolution, but that process wasn’t pretty. Transformation seldom is.
After trudging upstream, I found the reason I hadn’t been writing songs (even before I became a mom if I’m being honest, though that momentous life event seriously exacerbated the issue) was saturated in not prioritizing myself or my creativity.
I recently read this incredible piece by Cassidy Frost that untangles a whoooole lot of potential underlying causes for my willingness to put my dreams on the backburner — and frankly I’m still processing it — but I do know this: I had become so fed-up with how and who I was in motherhood, and angry at “the system” and myself for bowing to the societal expectations of selflessness (think about that word for a minute and how we pedestalize those who forego their own self in favor of someone else’s). I had a hunch that, if nothing else, making a song would at least distract me from the mundanity of pandemic-era toddler-life for a few hours. But the only song that I had written in the years leading up to this breaking point was about my son, so, though it provided a welcome distraction indeed, working with it also helped me see the forest for the trees, romanticize motherhood, and remind me how I meant to show up to that job in the first place — all while lighting up parts of my brain and being that had felt dead, all while teaching me that being an artist and a mom did not have to be mutually exclusive after all.
Building the demo for THE LIGHT felt like re-building myself. It was a task I had to do in solitude and included overcoming blocks around everything from seizing that solitude in the first place to wrestling with recording software, mics, cables, and an audio interface as though my life (or at least my mental health) depended on it…because it kind of did. (It would seem Cassidy Frost experienced a similar reckoning; I’ve really never felt so seen as I did reading their spot-on account of it.) I retreated to our studio space one night and didn’t come out until I had a demo I was proud of. I’d like to share it with you below because I can still hear the magic in my fierce determination, and maybe you will too.
In the weeks that followed that night, I would listen to this demo over and over (a practice I often perceived as self-indulgent thanks to my conditioning, but is actually part of the writing and production process). I clung to it, and the hope and confidence it gave me to keep creating (nearly every morning for the several years that followed - more on that in this post), until I had a whole record’s worth of material.
"The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of the parents.” - Carl Jung
I hate to think of who I would be now had my dearth of creativity not become untenable. I hate to think of all the parents (mostly mothers, let’s be honest) who are living that selfless reality now, not to mention the generations of art lost to parenting, or other pursuits that were deemed more worthy or practical. I can say with certainty that reclaiming my creativity and, subsequently, the parts of me it emboldened, made me a better parent, partner, and person. I believe it does our children a great disservice to model for them that having needs and desires beyond the nuclear family is selfish, and that paradigm only perpetuates art-that-never-was into generations of art-that-never-will-be.
Mothers who are artists find themselves at the unfortunate intersection of two identities so absolutely crucial to society and yet, so historically, tragically, and infuriatingly undervalued.
I suppose it could have been any song that helped me instinctually navigate away from what felt like an abandoned point in uncharted territory, but it’s not lost on me that it was the one about finding the courage and audacity to be my true self so my child can one day do the same.
I invite you to check out my video explorations of THE LIGHT on Instagram (or embedded below) mostly so you can see how cute my kid is. 🤗
A Song Story (about my journey into motherhood and how I reconciled that with being an artist)
The Making Of (a tribute to the version of me who was determined to make this demo, and the other beautiful souls who contributed to the final tracking)
The Teaching Of (an invitation to see the big picture amidst the minutiae, and put your own needs first)
The Official Lyric Video (available on my YouTube Channel & on Instagram) (where you can witness the first 8 years of Luca’s life in 3 and a half minutes 😭)
THE LIGHT song credits:
Written by Lisa Piccirillo
Produced by Jeremy Mendicino with Lisa Piccirillo
Vocal Production by Gregory Douglass
Engineered by Jeremy Mendicino, Lisa Piccirillo & Matt Appleton at The Station Studio
Mixed by Michael Barbiero at Ring Bearer Music Ltd.
Mastered by Greg Calbi at Sterling Sound
Lisa: vocals, piano
Jeremy: nylon string guitar, Hammond organ
Seth Barbiero: bass
Matt Appleton: horn arrangement, horns
Spring Peepers appear courtesy of Mother Nature