Four Strange Walls was the first song I wrote after an almost 4 year writing hiatus. I have written music my entire life but at 23 and newly sober after 5 years of chaos and self-destruction, suddenly a more settled life felt very appealing. So I quit music, quit writing and got myself a sensible job, unwittingly quitting feeling in the process. I fell into the trap of thinking that I needed to settle down and be sensible, that I needed to refocus my energy into a career, saving for a mortgage and getting married.
"Four Strange Walls is an open letter to those I hurt in my years of addiction."
All of this went up in smoke when I re-met Josh and within a few months I left London in a whirlwind with little more than a suitcase and a couple of bin bags of possessions. Here my new life began and gradually over the course of a couple of months I began to dabble with music again, singing a few non-committal harmonies at home whilst Josh was practicing. Then one night he had my up on stage, shaking in my boots and since that night I have never looked back. How could I have ever imagined a life without my biggest passion?! Why should any of us live our lives unfulfilled out of a sense of sensible duty to the treadmill of life?!
Four Strange Walls took me by surprise. I wasn’t trying to write, it just came to me almost in its entirety. I was cycling home one night listening to Cary Ann Hearst when one of the lines struck me like a knife and cracked me open. When I got home I poured with tears as I wrote out the words.
It doesn’t paint a very pretty picture and that was important to me. It was important to own up to the chaos, destruction and hurt I had caused and to highlight the damaging nature of addiction. Writing this song also reminded me of the importance of channelling pain and hurt creatively rather than trying to push away difficult emotions and memories. Four Strange Walls is an open letter to those I hurt in my years of addiction.
Carly x New album out now - Amazon, iTunes and Fish Records www.hopeinhighwater.com