Silka Weil - Self Titled & In Bloom
I met Silka in the yoga community years ago. The whole scene was a weird fit for me: here were all these "spiritual", "open" people, but there was a stringency to that too, and not all of myself could cram into that box.
Silka and I were at very different yet simultaneously pivotal points in our lives, struggling with ourselves, seeking solid ground on which to take our next steps. It's no surprise we both gravitated to the sense of belonging advertised to sell studio time and teacher training. At the time we discussed the illusion of it all, the amount of staging that went into the lounge area, the unseen tasks that went on behind the scenes.
Ever artistic, ever multidisciplinary, she wanted to draw me, and I was flattered. I worked the front desk while she sat, sketching. She wanted to start with my aura, she said, and my heart was tickled. We ran out of time, and she hadn't gotten to my face yet. I don't remember the drawing exactly, but I remember thinking it looked just like me, and I felt beautiful.
Years have passed between then and now, and in some ways it feels like a different lifetime. As soon as she picks up the phone for our interview, the time and space compress, and we're just catching each other up on our lives. I can hear her smile.
As an occupational therapist, Silka is currently working with people who have recently experienced their first psychotic episode. "A lot of them are musicians," she tells me, and I'm not surprised. "Music is a safe space. We're going to start a music group." My brain quickly draws a Venn diagram, one that I've envisioned before: the overlap between the creatives I know and those who struggle with mental health issues is solid as ever, and this includes me.
Silka has been singing and playing guitar since she was a kid. Lately, I've been listening to her self titled EP on repeat, and I tell her right away how wonderful it is -- and that I'm not at all surprised. Every song is poetic, words laden with meaning and simultaneously couched in secrecy. Her feelings are on graphic display while the details of the situation are universally vague. In Capsized, for instance, she sings:
Impregnate the worst of your first dates
And his T-shirt says it all
Family agrees
I tried to imagine the T-shirt. Was it offensive? Political?
"It was the king of hearts," she explains. "Getting head from the queen of hearts, and it said 'it's good to be king'."
Wow. That wasn't on my bingo card. The scene settles itself in my mind's eye: a poor choice, a lifetime connection, a shameless man on display in front of a disappointed family. Whatever the facts really are, that snapshot is a story we all know from somewhere, and as a result, it resonates.
"Someone told me I should sell the shirts at my shows," she says. (She'd have to get them printed: I scoured the internet in search of an image to include here, and had no luck.)
Across the board, the songs are personal, intimate stories of self questioning, toxic moments, and growth. I ask if the poetry of it all affords her a shield, or if she feels naked nonetheless.
"Naked," she replies.
Writing is part of her life's process in that not all of it is meant for public consumption.
She writes for herself, and shares what feels right. The songs included on the EP span years, from who she was to who she is. She tells me that yes, even though she wrote them herself, the meaning of the words change with time. I consider how memories are the same way, bubbling up from our old selves with the fresh perspective of all we've learned since.
In her press package she wrote beautifully:
"[It's] a collection of songs that survived from my youth. The ones that I couldn’t leave behind. I go through a journey of uncertainty that parallels the challenges of transitioning from being a teenager to becoming a young adult. With all its messy trial and error. In bringing these songs to the studio, I felt I was able to make sense of my past and reclaim parts of myself that may have felt uncomfortable to share."
She'd played with the idea of putting the songs in chronological order, which might've made for an interesting overall narrative, but the music led her in a different direction. I already know that she had a clear idea of the sound she was looking for at the outset of the project, and I ask her to name drop some of the artists who formed that framework.
"Oh, I have a playlist for each song." I fucking love that. Looking through her Spotify playlists, I feel like I'm deep diving into her creative process. PJ Harvey, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Portishead, and so many more, the unseen threads of her tapestry
The newest song on the album is Time, written for the man who would become her fiancé. Meeting in their early twenties, they embarked on a long distance relationship. "The thought of being able to give him 'all my time' was absolutely delicious." In the song she asks:
And if I’ve frozen
Can I still bloom
She knew the relationship was different, that in a safe place even her scars could soften and flower.
That security "rekindled a sense of peace that we return to rather than acquire". Even as I type this, I pause to breathe those words, take a moment to bask in her serene, open-hearted wisdom.Neither one of us frequent yoga studios anymore, though we both have home practices. We discuss the strange turn that particular community took around Covid and vaccines. We talk about how the studio was an illusion of holism, and a shallow one at that. When the boss there wouldn't give me a raise and I had to leave for more money, she asked me to tell everyone I was leaving to pursue my literary dreams. We reminisce about how strange and gross that was.
It's a parallel, really, to the toxic heart choices we've made in our past, the things we accepted before we knew any different, but never held against the ideal of Love with a capital L. And that right there is both the crux of the matter, and the message of her album.
For more information on Silka Weil, visit her WEBSITE.
