Album Review: "Flowers for Vases//descansos" by Hayley Williams

Cover Art for "Flowers for Vases//descansos"

Hayley Williams released her second solo album, "Flowers for Vases//descansos" this past Friday, 5 February 2021. A video of the audio for one of the songs on the album showed up on my YouTube recommendations. Since it was just the audio, they were using the cover artwork as the thumbnail and that's what truly drew me in. I found it sensual and evocative. The cover features a feminine body (probably Williams) immersed in water, with the water swirling from shades of deep magenta and hot pink to a viscous white. That first song echoed something I have been feeling intensely, so much so that I decided to listen to the album on Spotify. This is one of those albums - for me - that appeared at precisely the exact time I needed it. I've been incredibly interested in healing modalities for various reasons (PPD, Complex-PTSD, general trauma recovery) and music therapy is one of those obvious tracks for me to explore, because it's been such a major tool in my own journey. Lately, artists have been releasing albums that are not only intensely personal, but also provide as much healing for the listener as they did for the artist making them. I think it's just that 2020 stirred up so much shit for everyone that we'll be working through those triggers deep into 2021 and beyond. I personally welcome music that helps me feel my own feelings, because I have a hard time doing that. I repress a lot of things, I put on a happy face for others because I think that's what they need (regardless of what I need), and so it's usually not apparent I'm in distress until things get really bad. Believe me - it's something I'm aware of and I'm working on.

This album is very much about memories and the unexpected grief they bring with them. The subtitle for this album - and the name of one of the tracks - is "descansos," which is a Spanish term for a memorial placed at the site of a violent and unexpected death. They are often seen at the site of fatal auto accidents. These are very common in New Mexico (as well as other places in the Southwest, particularly places with a large Hispanic population) and were a familiar site in my childhood. You can sort of hear that slightly Western influence in the songs on the album. Overall, the tone of the album was low-key, almost folksy - I could imagine Williams testing out the songs around a campfire, a flannel shirt protecting her from the desert winds. All the songs embody a different aspect of loneliness, the kind of loneliness you only get by ruminating on old memories, both good and bad. It is not clear what she is feeling this grief from. The songs could be interpreted as arising from a bad breakup (Williams got a divorce in 2017), a death of a loved one, or maybe she's just working through the pain she felt as a child during her own parents' divorce. It could be an amalgamation of all three. The songs are so amorphous, it seems as if Williams has left it to the listener to decide what memories this album elicits for them. Let's do a brief walkthrough of the songs on this album, hitting the highlights and my favorites (including the song that sparked this post) so you can get a feel for the musical journey you'll get if you decide to listen through.

First thing to go was the sound of his voice

These are the opening lyrics of this album. "First Thing to Go" captures that desperation you feel when you know you're forgetting pieces of a person and you're trying to hold on. Part of you knows it might be for the best, but you don't want to lose them completely. I mentioned this feeling a few posts ago. It reminds me of "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." You think things will be easier if you could just forget. But the good things disappear, too. Like the sound of their voice, the exact color of their eyes, the feel of their hands in yours. These sensory things that feel so memorable in the moment start to fade away. The final torture of time and distance, because you're present the whole time, aware that it's happening. Watching it slip through your hands, like so much water. Just for reference - because I can't help myself - Hayley's Chiron is in Cancer, directly opposite her Sun in Capricorn (she actually has a whole stellium in Cap - Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are all in the game). She's very aware of her wounds and this placement can definitely show up as protecting her pain out of sentimental nostalgia. 

After this, the album moves into "My Limb," easily the catchiest song and one of my favorites. The chorus is stuck in my head even now. The idea expressed is that, some people are so interconnected to you, it's like losing a limb when they're gone. Part of you would rather die ("bleed out" to use her imagery) than let go of them. To even let go of the memories of them. In amputations, there's this phenomena of phantom sensations. I think we get that for other things, too, especially with connections. Like with phones. If you're used to getting a lot of messages on your phone, you might hear rings or feel vibrations, but when you check your phone, there's nothing. It's a disconcerting feeling. Almost like you're losing your mind, because it's clear you're obviously imagining it.

If you gotta amputate, don't give me the tourniquet

You wish that I would run away, sever what isn't working

But I'll let my body bleed out, leaning to my left side

If your part of me is gone now, do I wanna survive?

The next song is called "Asystole." I had to google what that meant, so I'll share the meaning for your benefit - an asystole is the sound of the lack of a heartbeat. You may be more familiar with the term "flatlining." That's an asystole. The lyrics show her trying to convince herself she's better off without the person she's singing about. But, in reality, she feels dead and wants to be revived. The mind is trying to talk the heart out of what it knows. This leads very aptly into the next song, "Trigger." This is another one of those relationship post-mortem songs. Trying to figure out why this one person, this one relationship hurt so much. A lot of it comes down to our attachment style, our core wounds from childhood, and our expectations of Love. Most relationships will activate a couple of these things but at a manageable level. Once in a while, though, one relationship will activate all of them at once. These usually blow up pretty quickly, because time and distance is needed to work through the "triggers." Otherwise, you're just hurting each other.

'Cause I got the trigger, but you hold the gun

How come you never put the safety on?

Let's move forward to "Good Grief." This one hit hard. Not only does it most incorporate the Western undertones into the melody, but the lyrics are devastatingly honest about the physical side effects of grief. The opening lines are about not eating since the triggering event. Starvation is my go-to self-destructive behavior and when I'm severely depressed, I lose a lot of weight. During the first few weeks of PPD, I hardly ate. My first day out of the hospital after my second son was born, my dad and husband went out to get me one of my favorite meals - Tofu Pad Thai. What I used to be able to devour in one or two meals, I could barely eat a few bites. In fact, I barely ate at all the first month after giving birth. I don't want to go into the reasons why - all I can say is it didn't feel worth the trouble. To quote the song, "there's no such thing as good grief." But, it is necessary to move through grief when it's triggered, or else you get stuck at one of the stages. Sadness, Anger, Bargaining, Denial - or maybe you just keep waffling between all the stages. It's a process. And you have to keep going until you reach and can sustain Acceptance.

"KYRH" stands for "Keep You Right Here." This is the song I found on YouTube that pulled me into this musical journey. It's so fucking simple - only a few lines of lyrics, repeated in two verses. She allows the piano to fill in the rest. And that's how you know it's good poetry, when only a few words can elicit such emotional catharsis. You understand exactly how she's feeling. She's going to keep this person as close as she can, without crossing whatever line has been drawn. Sometimes, that's all you can do.

Keep you right here where the line is

At my fingers, on the surface

Keep you right here where the line is

Keep you right here

The final song I'm going to bring to your attention is "No Use I Just Do." There's this thing I do, as a hopeless romantic - always striving to truly understand what love is. Especially with everything I've been learning about trauma bonds and attachment wounds and inner child healing, I went through a couple months not believing Love was a real thing. It seems all I see everywhere are wounded, broken people who are just afraid to be alone. They don't really care if it's love as long as someone is there. There was a point where it felt like I had a black hole where my heart should be. Again, this is where feeling my feelings (through embodiment practices) has become so vital. It has helped me to know how love feels like in my body (an overpowering warmth radiating from my heart). Because Love is not a mental thing - when it's real, it is inconvenient, it doesn't make sense, it can't really even be justified. It just is. It's just there and you don't know what to do with it. Especially when it has nowhere to go. Words can't describe it, it has to be felt. It's easy to find someone to fill in a space, but the heart is wiser than that. It knows where to go in those quiet moments. I love the chorus on this - it's like a mantra. And the hopeless romantic part of me wants to bathe in it forever, it's that beautiful.

If I just wanted someone to hold

Then really, anyone would do

I close my eyes and really try

Not to turn 'em into you

It's no use, I just love you

It's no use, I just love you

It's no use, I just love you

It's no use, I just love you

It's no use, I just do

My final recommendation - I highly encourage you to go give this album a listen because it's worth it. It's gorgeous all the way through. I found myself wishing the songs were longer and, in terms of length, it is a short listen at 42 minutes from start to finish. Going to share the audio video for "KYRH" as a taster. Enjoy!

"KYRH" Video

"The Only Exception" by Paramour

This morning, I woke up about 30 minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off with one phrase being repeated over and over. "Be Love. The people who are meant to be in your life will rise up to meet you." I don't know why but it felt very profound. All day, I've been pondering what it means. And I think that it's this - allow yourself to love as if you've never been hurt before, as if you can't be hurt. Those who are meant for you will match your intensity, match that vibration. They will choose to change, because that is what love does. It changes everything. In fact, love - genuine, real, unconditional Love - is the only thing that ever really changed anything, when you think about it.

So what does it mean to be Love? Well, I'm not particularly religious but I do like that one Bible quote, because it always rang true. 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away." I'll admit, it's hard to embody that - but most people don't even really try nowadays. They think they're justified in their outrage at little things - things that, in the grand scheme of things, don't particularly matter - that they forget that they're directing that anger and hatred at real people. It's easy to get stuck in your head, get mired down in your thoughts, your opinions, your desires, your dreams, your fears, your insecurities. But, after a very lonely childhood spent stuck in my own head, I figured out the hard way that happiness is found in the connections we have with other people, no matter how tenuous we think those threads are.

Last weekend, I binge watched "Russian Doll" on Netflix (which I highly recommend) and a lot of things kind of clicked in my head. There's one episode where the main character, Nadia, spends a whole night watching over a homeless man to prevent his shoes from being stolen, because she knows that without the shoes, he's going to freeze to death in one timeline. So, lesson number 1 - if you can, be someone's guardian angel. You may think a random act of kindness is small and meaningless, but it may not be. Next, Nadia had to face her inner child and the guilt she felt for choosing herself - her own well-being - by telling a social worker that she wanted to live with her mom's friend, and not her mom. This episode hit me kind of hard, because Nadia's relationship with her mother very closely resembled mine. She had to grow up a lot sooner than she should've had to, she had to take care of someone psychologically who should've been taking care of her, so it felt wrong and selfish to acknowledge what she wanted. Lesson number 3, forgive yourself for choosing yourself, especially in situations where things were out of your control. And lesson number 4, there is nothing you can do to make someone happy if they aren't choosing to be happy for themselves. You are not responsible for someone else's happiness. Ever. But that doesn't mean you can't take responsibility for helping them do what they need to do. Which leads to lesson number 5 - we are responsible for our own happiness, so do what you need to do. If you need to go to therapy, go to therapy. If you need to make a change in your life, make that change. Don't expect anyone else to make you happy, because they will always fail to meet your expectations, and that's not fair to put on them.

I liked the season finale because, in the last episode, the two main characters - Nadia and Alan - have to prove that they learned these lessons by being separated into two  timelines and make the choice they failed to make originally. Throughout the show, they keep trying to figure out how they're connected. Well, in the end, they discover they were meant to save each other and when they learn this, the timelines merge and they're back together again. This reminds me of the ending of one of my favorite movies, "Wristcutters: A Love Story." In it, a guy (Zia) is trapped in purgatory after he commits suicide. In purgatory, he's living out the same boring life he was living before he died, until he meets a girl (Mikal) who insists there's been a mistake and demands to speak to the People in Charge (PIC). So he goes on a journey to help her find the PIC and, of course, they fall in love. Mikal is given a chance to return to life but she tells Zia that she'll come back. He's left waiting, convinced he'll never see her again but happy that she got what she wanted. The PIC take pity on him and return him to life, too. Zia wakes up in a hospital bed and when he turns to the patient next to him, he realizes it's Mikal and they smile at each other. They smile because they know they'll never be alone again.

Maybe I know, somewhere

Deep in my soul

That love never lasts

And we've got to find other ways

To make it alone

But keep a straight face

And I've always lived like this

Keeping a comfortable, distance

And up until now

I had sworn to myself that I'm content

With loneliness

Because none of it was ever worth the risk

I chose this song for Valentine's Day because I find something very honest in it. In the video, Haley Williams is lying in a pile of stereotypical Valentine's Day crap during some scenes, in kind of an ironic twist. I think the lyrics speak to something a lot of people can relate to - they go through life trying so hard to protect their heart, after years of disappointments and sadness. But when you fall in love - real love - you want to remove all those barriers. You want to get over all those fears of abandonment, rejection, loss, unworthiness, because you know that those don't allow you to be the best person you can be. And that's how love changes us - it should make us remember who we want to be, because that person is amazing. And if you love someone, you want to give them someone amazing and nothing less. And that requires taking some chances and doing something scary. It may require you to drop habits and behaviors and beliefs that you've had for decades. It should. I think we let ourselves get kind of cynical after a while. We become convinced that we're unlovable because we're not pretty enough, or smart enough, or fast enough or any number of "enoughs." Fill in the blank and you'll see what I mean. And then we use those lies as excuses to build a wall to keep love out, because we're afraid. Love doesn't exist. Love never lasts. Love is pain. Love is torture. Love is a trap. None of that is true, of course, but you'd never know that looking at society. And I'm tired of being cynical.

Sorry for the long rant. I think I had a lot more to say from when I was planning this in my head earlier, but it's late, I'm really tired, and I'm honestly surprised I even wrote this much. As far as visual interpretations go, I think video is worth watching. It's basically a psychologically analysis of how Williams' childhood shaped her approach to love. In the video, she meets this guy and he stays with her all night just talking after a love at first sight moment. In the beginning, the intensity makes her afraid and she's about to bail on him. But after looking at the things that make her want to run, she comes the conclusion that she'll regret it if she doesn't take this chance, so she returns to the original moment and makes a different choice.

"The Only Exception" Video