My heart weighs a ton
My heart weighs a ton
№94 — Not Feeling Right (demo)
organizing an accident is a weekly newsletter where I leak home demos of unreleased songs, first draft lyrics, thoughts on the creative process, & dispatches from music life in Paris.
Listen to “Not Feeling Right” (demo):
This song was written on April 16, 2020
This is demo leak #94
Greetings from Normandy,
Today’s song was written in the midst of the initial Covid lockdowns, during that two-month period of heavy writing, weed, and global paranoia—three things that inevitably fed off one another.
From the sound of this disjointed demo, I must have been leaning into the strangeness and angst I felt while stuck inside during a particularly beautiful Parisian springtime. It was written in the same period as much of the material on my album Soft Power, but did not make the cut (nor was it in the running).
Admittedly, I adored those days. The world seemed to grant artists permission to do precisely what they had always done, yet without social obligations and feelings of FOMO hovering overhead. It was a time spent creating, cooking (well, eating in my case), hanging with Janis, and going for runs along an empty Champs-Élysées.
I wouldn’t wish for it to happen again, but I, like many others, have adopted some of those lessons learned into my life since.
With love,
Ryan
“Not Feeling Right” lyrics
Whenever I fight
Myself through the night
I lose
I lose
It’s nothing but I
Can barely get by
On fumes
On fumes
It’s not working out
This luck of mine
I’m no good at wishful thinking
I’m not feeling right
It’s hard to get up
To keep playing dumb
It’s true
It’s true
My heart weighs a ton
But I’m feeling young
I do
I do
If I could wake up
In a place in the sun
Anew
Anew
But I’m so helpless
I can’t even try
I won’t go finding silver linings
I’m not feeling right
These lyrics were written in April 2020.
From the vault
What I’m listening to this week
What I’ve been reading
Jonathan Lethem - Chronic City
Check out my previous demos and writing via the Substack archive + discover my official music releases on Spotify, Apple, or your platform of choice. Find me on all socials at @thisryanegan.
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