5 years

This Spring marks 5 years of me performing my own songs in public. It has been a slow but incredible process. Here is a video of short-haired Stephanie, singing her very very very first open mic, in Brooklyn NY of all places… It’s strange how it took me 5y to listen to and watch this video without cringing. Now I kind of like it… “Jordan” is a song about impossible love. About someone offering to carry someone’s pain, but they are not (yet) able to share it… It is one of the first compositions in which I discovered that I want to create haunting sounds that capture the ambivalence of love. Both its hope, its simplicity, its depth, its joy and its despair and pain. For all these reasons I prefer the word tenderness. Sometimes the desire to be tender is not reciprocated, and all you can do is compose a song. There, in that song, your tenderness finds a home. 5y after the heartbreak, I hope Jordan is doing ok. We could never be, but some version of us exists in this song. And I visit our home whenever I sing our tune to the sky or anyone who wants to listen!