Book 13: A STUDY IN WAITING
At this stage, I think it’s no secret that I’ve never dated (and if that was indeed a secret to you then: surprise!!!). Even though I’ve made many-a-songs about meetcutes and butterflies, I sadly have to inform you these have all been based on frequent viewings of classic 2000s romcoms that feature some version of the Rachel McAdams, Ryan Gosling, Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey combo. So as someone well-versed in waiting for love, I think it was time to put the proverbial pen to paper (or should I say fingertip to iPhone screen) and turn this experience into a bookstore song.
To be completely transparent, I never quite intended on writing this song. It came fluttering in like a teeny tiny, mysterious little magical creature. First, an overture of gently sprinkling pixie dust, then a twinkling fairy in all its sparkly, whimsical glory. I was taking a shower on a winter evening and randomly started thinking of cozy, slightly odd love-themed lyrics (think Wes Anderson in a song). Almost simultaneously, I started adding in a melody that felt strangely familiar. By the end of said shower, I had the first verse written, but the melody’s familiarity still an unresolved case. I was almost certain it was classical music in origin, but couldn’t quite pin it down in the moment. The following day, I searched high and low through my Apple Music library (I was sure I must’ve heard the piece recently and that’s why my brain naturally latched on to it) to identify the culprit: it was Edward Elgar’s Salut d’amour.
I would now highly suggest a brief intermezzo of about 4 minutes to listen to this masterpiece here.
Previously unbeknownst to me (and deeply, profoundly serendipitous), the title of the song literally translates to ‘a greeting of love’. Somewhere deep in the crevasses of my brain, a few neurons got together and signaled to one another that this melody is a love-themed song, initiating my shower lyric songwriting session to be built entirely around love. Once I realized just what a beautiful coincidence I had stumbled upon, I sprung back into action and continued writing. A few days later, I sat down at the piano in my living room and recorded the first full demo:
Writing this, it felt like I was making a Disney princess song - there was so much whimsical imagery that I could play around with. It needed to be very vivid and sensory, yet have each additional visual contribute to the greater overarching message of the song. It started as a quirky way of describing seeing love in restaurants and theatre plays, but the more the verses went on and the more lines I needed to write, the more I started realizing how omnipresent love truly is in our world. It’s the substrate of everything around us, a quiet driving force that seeps into every machination of life here on Earth. Perhaps the word ‘love’ is too tinged with a human perception of the world around us, but there IS an underlying gear that pushes everything around us towards replication and continuation: a subconscious evolutionary instinct to preserve life.
I’ve found it in birds crossing over the sea
I’ve found it in courtships of a bumblebee
And for us as humans, it seems to be embedded in the very foundations of our society. So many decisions, so many works of art initiated and inspired by a an inescapably powerful emotion; a profound desire and ability to love.
It’s in every detail of the world we’ve built
The lift of a sword, a writer’s ache-drenched quill
When I first began working on the song, I treated love as something so organic and natural, yet something so personally unknown to me. But a few distinct branches of thought eventually sprung from this initial concept:
there us no rush to find it - true love is worth waiting for
waiting doesn’t have to be static, it should be used to get to know oneself
love reveals itself in many different forms; when it’s looked for, it can be found everywhere around us
And so the central metaphor of the song took shape: you as the architect and your self and your life as a house that you get to design and build. There was something deeply comforting and reassuring about that image; the seeming stillness of waiting that serves as a host for continuous internal growth and expansion. Despite popular culture often making it seem as such, a moment spent alone is a moment every bit as precious as a moment spent with a partner. Instead of treating being single as a temporary period meant to be endured, I wanted to turn this song into a celebration of it: the unique opportunity to work on yourself and your house. :)
From the very beginning, I knew this song was just begging for some nostalgic, Alan Menken Disney production treatment. I wanted it to feel every bit as fairytale-native as possible. And that’s when I decided to fully commit to something I was previously a bit hesitant to do: a dramatic, classical music orchestral intro (30 seconds of it to be exact). This is a very rough draft of the underlying composition of the intro, played on my living room piano as Iw as writing it:
I thought about this melody a lot, arranging and re-arranging it in my head with different instruments to try and achieve as lush of an interpretation as possible (think sweeping harp arpeggios and octaves-spanning pizzicato strings). After a few mental iterations, I felt ready to sit down at my computer and turn it into something actually audible. :)
I played around a lot with tempo fluctuations to make the intro feel as naturally playable as possible and ended up spending an entire day just building the beginning 30 seconds of the song, line by line.
Luckily for me, all of that intricate work meant future Anja had a much easier job building the rest of the song - all of the instruments were already laid out in front of me, I just had to break it all down and bring it back gradually throughout the production:
As the production was starting to come together, I noticed the verses were at times feeling a bit too cyclical and repetitive. Even though I was using the Salut d’amour melody that is in and of itself quite versatile and full of movement, I needed something to break it apart. I whipped out the Logic orchestral instruments and started playing around with some piccolo fills (this is probably the most classical music component of the entire song:
Because of the Salut s’amour interpolation, a large part of this production work was essentially re-orchestrating the Edward Elgar original over a more straightforward chord progression. At once, it became an homage to my classical roots, yet a challenge on how to merge that with my current work in Pop music. I recruited my trusty Alchemy synth and added some glittering pads:
As well as this synth chord pattern that reminded me SO much of Coldplay’s Viva la Vida:
As the final touch, I asked Victor to record some live acoustic guitar for the song - this would serve as my more Pop grounding that the rest of the Disney elements could be layered on top of. As the main foundation, you can hear these strums:
And for added movement and flow, an arpeggio motif:
And of course, Victor’s live strings - he recorded almost 30 individual tracks of violin and cello parts that I composed throughout the production period:
I finished the song’s production in April and it was now time for me to shift my mindset from the audio world of the song and dive fully into its visuals. Since this was a love-themed Disney-inspired song, a soft pink palette seemed to have been embedded into the very core of the song since its inception. Since spring was quickly coming to an end (and with it, the beautiful greenery still lush from California’s rainy season), I didn’t want to wait to film the music video. I needed the colors to be vibrant and full of life so I was now in a race against time to try and catch the last breaths of spring’s flora. I had the Pulgas Water Temple around Palo Alto on my filming list for the longest time. It’s such a gorgeous location (and so unusual for this area!), but I never had a song whose aesthetic would fit it just right. That is, until now. :)
A few fun facts about the Pulgas Water Temple:
it was built by the San Francisco Water Department to celebrate the 1934 completion of the Hetch Hetchy Project, which brings clean drinking water via gravity from Yosemite National Park to the Bay Area
designed by San Francisco architect William G. Merchant in the Beaux-Arts style, featuring fluted Corinthian columns inspired by ancient Greek and Roman architecture
features the biblical quote carved into the frieze: “I give waters in the wilderness and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people”
nn initial temporary structure was put up in October 1934 for an opening ceremony attended by 20,000 people, and the permanent stone monument was completed in 1938
The location is about an hour away from where we live so I decided to commit to it and started planning around going to film in about a week (remember, I was in a race with mother nature here!!). Since the setting was already so gorgeous, I didn’t want to do anything fancy with the video. The plan was to get multiple lil syncing shots around the water temple, depicting the process of waiting. I immediately knew the dress I was going to wear for the video - I had gotten it from Sister Jane for Black Friday a few months before, with the intention of using it in a future music video. I paired with a pink rhinestone-studded headband (that I previously used in the visualizer for Surrender) and a pair of pastel pink flats that I wore in the forest portion of the Dinner Parties music video.
While this was very Disney princess and aesthetically pleasing, I knew I also needed a memorable, symbolism-heavy object to tie everything together and take the outfit from pretty to meaningful. Since the song revolves around the imagery of being the architect of your own house / life / self, I started looking for house-shaped bags. This way, my symbolism object could double as an accessory and an addition to the storytelling. We also used some fake flower blossoms and hand glued them on the ‘window sill’ of the house bag.
We decided to try and film on a Monday to encounter the water temple area in its most empty iteration. My dad dropped us off and my mom and I embarked on our music video adventure. We got there around 11am and were greeted by a few girlypops taking photos for Instagram and a few couples doing professional engagement photoshoots. But overall, much MUCH less crowded than I had been preparing myself for. We quickly took out my phone and started taking photos, then lip syncing single take videos from the same angle. There was a wind advisory that day across the Bay Area and we almost cancelled the shoot because of it; as it turns out, the wind provided the most magical touch. I sped up the song 2x so that when editing, I could slow it all down and give it that dreamy, soft feeling. :)
Because the video was done so early due to spring’s timetable of greenery, I had months before the song would actually be out (I was aiming for a late summer release). That meant I had a lot of time to think about what I’d want on the cover for the single AND use the music video as a color and theme reference point. I continued to circle the metaphor of the house and the architect, brainstorming about ways it could be incorporated in this part of the release as well. After tapping my trusty Pinterest for some inspiration, I was able to put together a brief for Vida Igličar who designed and illustrated the final cover you know today.
I LOVED the ornate, antique door knob design Vida drew - it made everything feel even more magical and romantic. But my favorite detail are the two birds holding a heart-shaped string; it’s a reference to the line “I’ve found it in birds crossing over the sea” and alludes to the song’s theme that love is everyone around us.
This is a song that younger Anja wished she would know how to produce. It’s also a song I wish young Anja could hear the lyrics to. A Disney princess tiered-cake equivalent: soft and whimsical on the outside, but layered and complex once you bite into it. Even though I was so certain of its thesis at the time of making this, it’s still comforting to listen back to it and be reminded that waiting is a wonderfully busy ordeal. I hope you hear it and it serves as a birdsong whisper, gently chirping that there’s no rush to be with someone: being with yourself is every bit as magical.