Swim

BEHIND THE MUSIC

Music, and creating it, has been a great friend to me over the years. It's not only helped me celebrate life but also helped me process some of life’s more challenging feelings and emotions.

I did feel quite isolated at times - particularly in my late 20s - if for no other reason than losing sight of the bonds that connect us all. I’ve come to realise, for me at least, that life is all about relationship - relationship with ourselves, with each other, with something greater. Love lives in the sharing of experience and that’s where I find meaning. While the stories behind my songs are personal, the emotions that inspire them are universal. I’m starting to think that speaking to that is more important than the songs themselves.

So with all that in mind, here’s the story behind what inspired the title track to my album, SWIM.

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SWIM - listen here

I was having a pretty tough time in myself in July 1998 when I wrote this song. I knew I wanted to live a creative life and do something that felt meaningful to me but had no idea how to go about it. I was completely inauthentic in all my relationships at the time - hiding from my friends and family a sense of melancholy that had crept over me during the previous the year. I was ruminating on the meaning and purpose of life without the awareness (or life experience!) to do so from a balanced perspective. Everything suddenly looked so pointless. I felt sad. Then, given how much in life I had to be grateful for, I felt guilty about feeling sad and so the downward spiral began.

Instead of trusting in those who loved me I did the classic kiwi guy thing and hid my emotions away - pretending with everyone that I was still the fun, outgoing Mark they always new me to be. I felt fake and became increasingly disconnected and hostile towards myself. I was pretty depressed.

The one upside of all this was, it did prove fertile ground for songwriting . Swim came to me around the middle of this experience and while it may sound like a slightly cynical love song from one person to another, it’s actually a story of someone being invited, almost taunted, by life itself to say yes or no to it: to swim in its magnificence or succumb to its dark waters. We all know how beautiful and terrifying the ocean can be and life can be like that too. It’s important that we not only learn how to swim but how to swim together, and to know how to call out to each other when we feel ourselves slipping beneath the waves.

Fortunately for me I had people around who eventually saw past my facade. They helped me back to the surface and I’m so grateful to this day for the love and support they showed me during that time. I still hurt sometimes - we all do right - but over the many years since then I’ve come to no longer fear my emotions or judge them as good or bad. As Sadhguru says, we are all seeking a life of pleasantness, and in the words of Abraham-Hicks, emotions are simply a guiding force, letting you know whether you are on or off track with the things you are choosing to think or believe.

I no longer choose to believe in the troubling things I once did. But on those occasions when thoughts creep in that bring me to a bit of a low ebb, I look at my relationships (inside and out), turn to the vastness of the ocean, breathe, and remind myself that I’m clearly part of something far greater than I can perceive from my current perspective. I like to think now that, individually and collectively, we are all on a journey to loving as love is - free from limiting beliefs, conditions and circumstances we often only think we need in order to experience it.

So that’s Swim! While this recording lacks some of the urgency with which I normally sing it ... you'll get the drift