the album i didn’t know i was making

the story behind ‘the lives we almost lived | the life we’re still living’

i didn’t start with an album

I didn’t sit down one day and decide to write an album called the lives we almost lived | the life we’re still living.

There was no grand concept. No carefully plotted narrative. No list of subjects I wanted to explore or emotions I needed to work through.

There were just songs.

Some came from moments I was still trying to understand. Some came from looking back at things I thought I already understood. Others came from experiences I couldn’t possibly have anticipated when I sharing my music earlier this year.

And somewhere along the way, those songs began to feel like they belonged together.

I think that’s one of the things I’ve come to appreciate most about writing music.

Sometimes you know exactly what you’re trying to say.

Sometimes you don’t realize what you’ve been saying until much later.

This album turned out to be one of those times.

after the silence

The collection begins with after the silence.

That song has always held a particular significance for me because it explores what happens when the noise finally stops. When the arguments, explanations, questions, and constant attempts to make sense of something give way to quiet.

And in that quiet, you’re left with yourself.

Not necessarily the version of yourself you expected to find.

Just the person who’s still there.

There’s something vulnerable about that kind of silence. It can be uncomfortable. It can be lonely. But it can also reveal things that were impossible to recognize when everything around you was moving so quickly.

I chose to begin the album there because, musically, it felt like the right place to start.

Only later did I appreciate how appropriate that choice was.

Because so much of this collection is about what happens after the noise stops.

the songs kept changing

One of the things that makes this collection different from my earlier albums is that several songs revisit ideas I’ve explored before.

altered all the same, revisited is perhaps the most obvious example.

I’ve become fascinated by the idea that a song can remain connected to the experience that inspired it while taking on an entirely different meaning as time passes.

The words may be familiar. The emotional territory may be familiar.

But the person singing them isn’t quite the same person anymore.

And that changes things.

The same is true of the way i swam, which appears here in two different interpretations: looking back and reaching back.

I didn’t want to choose between them.

They approach the same emotional landscape from different directions, and both felt important to the collection.

There’s a distinction between looking back at something and reaching back toward it.

One is about understanding where you’ve been.

The other is about recognizing what you might still carry forward.

I think we do both throughout our lives, sometimes without even realizing it.

And sometimes we need more than one version of a song to express what we’re actually feeling.

the lives that almost happened

twenty lifetimes is one of the songs that helped me recognize what this collection was becoming.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how many different lives exist inside the one we’re actually living.

Not literally, of course.

But every meaningful decision creates possibilities. Every relationship introduces a future we begin to imagine. Every unexpected encounter opens a door that wasn’t there before.

And every time one of those possibilities doesn’t become reality, we’re left with some version of a life that almost happened.

I don’t think those imagined lives are meaningless simply because we don’t get to live them.

Sometimes they teach us something about what we wanted.

Sometimes they reveal what we were willing to sacrifice.

Sometimes they help us understand why we're no longer willing to make those same sacrifices.

And sometimes they're simply beautiful possibilities that never found their way into reality.

That doesn't mean we have to spend the rest of our lives mourning them.

But I don't think we need to pretend they never mattered, either.

four days, two hours, and everything in between

Then there are songs like the clocks forgot.

That song came from an experience that lasted only a handful of days but left me with an unexpectedly complicated set of emotions.

Four days can disappear when you feel close to someone.

And two hours can feel like an eternity when you suddenly feel invisible beside them.

I found that contrast fascinating.

How can the same person make time feel so different?

How can something feel so promising one moment and so uncertain the next?

And how do you reconcile the genuine happiness you experienced with the disappointment that followed?

I don't think those questions always have satisfying answers.

But I do think both experiences can be real.

The happiness doesn't become imaginary because something ended badly.

And the disappointment doesn't disappear because some of the memories were wonderful.

That idea runs through several songs on this album.

It's particularly present in two truths.

I've learned that two seemingly contradictory things can be true at the same time.

I can appreciate someone and still recognize that their presence in my life wasn't good for me.

I can miss a moment without wanting to return to the circumstances surrounding it.

I can be disappointed by how something ended without regretting that it happened.

And I can be hopeful about what comes next while still feeling uncertain about where I'm going.

Perhaps that's one of the more important things this year has taught me.

Life rarely offers the neat emotional conclusions we would prefer.

and sometimes, you just have to laugh

Of course, not everything on this album is solemn reflection.

There's inconvenient.

I have to laugh a little when I think about that song, because it came from a series of encounters that were, frankly, almost absurd in their timing.

At some point, you have to decide whether you're going to be frustrated by the ridiculousness of a situation or turn it into something creative.

I chose the latter.

And I may have allowed myself to be a little wicked in the process.

That's another thing I've learned about writing autobiographical music.

Being truthful doesn't mean every song has to be a solemn confession.

Sometimes the most honest response to an experience is humor.

Sometimes it's sarcasm.

Sometimes it's a dance beat.

And sometimes it's all three.

the story appeared after the songs

When I finally began assembling the album, I focused almost entirely on the music.

I listened to different running orders, moved songs around, and paid attention to how one track felt when it ended and the next began.

I wasn't trying to construct a story.

I was trying to create a listening experience that felt natural.

Eventually, I settled on twelve tracks.

And then something occurred to me.

The sequence I'd arrived at, almost entirely by ear, seemed to follow an emotional progression remarkably similar to the one I'd explored across my first three albums.

It began with songs about myself.

Then came connection. Possibility. Those first moments when someone new enters your life and everything feels a little different.

Then the complications.

The contradictions.

The endings.

The aftermath.

And eventually, the process of picking myself up and continuing forward.

I hadn't planned any of that.

But there it was.

And I found myself wondering whether I'd been telling a story without realizing it.

Or perhaps I'd simply reached a point where I could recognize the pattern more clearly.

Either way, I decided not to interfere with it.

The music had led me there.

I trusted it.

the same song, a different meaning

One of my favorite decisions was to include two versions of after the silence.

The original version opens the album.

after the silence (warehouse revelation) appears near the end.

They're two interpretations of the same underlying idea, but they arrive at very different emotional conclusions.

One ends with the recognition that something is a problem.

The other transforms that recognition into an expression of power.

“That's the problem.”

“That's my power.”

I love that contrast.

Because the circumstances we experience don't always change.

Sometimes what changes is our understanding of them.

The things that once made us feel powerless can become the very experiences that help us recognize our strength.

Not because the pain was necessary.

Not because everything happened for a reason.

But because we get to decide what we do with what happened.

And I think that's one of the most important ideas running through this collection.

The past doesn't have to change for our relationship with it to change.

the epilogue that became a beginning

The album closes with epilogue II - a life worth loving.

That song means a great deal to me.

My earlier collections—the quiet between us, the echo between us, and the voices between us—explored different stages of a life that was changing in ways I hadn't anticipated.

Those albums were deeply personal.

They were about love, loss, confusion, memory, anger, acceptance, and the difficult process of understanding what happens when the future you expected no longer exists.

The first epilogue, where we become, ended with a promise:

You got me this far. I'll take it from here.

At the time, those words felt like the conclusion of something.

But as I continued writing, I realized they were also a beginning.

Because taking it from here means actually living whatever comes next.

It means making decisions without knowing how they'll turn out.

It means allowing yourself to be surprised.

It means risking disappointment again.

It means discovering that you're capable of feeling things you thought might have been lost to you.

And it means accepting that the person you're becoming may not resemble the person you once imagined you'd be.

I wanted the final song to acknowledge everything that came before it while opening the door to whatever comes next.

Not a triumphant declaration that I've overcome every obstacle.

Not a promise that everything will be wonderful from now on.

Just a recognition that the life I'm living has value, even when it doesn't look the way I expected.

Four lines from the song say it better than I can:

My life doesn't have to become
The life I imagined
For it to be
A life worth loving.

still becoming

I think what makes this collection so personal is that it doesn't represent a finished transformation.

I'm still figuring things out.

I'm still discovering what I want, what I need, and what I'm willing to accept.

I'm still making mistakes.

I'm still learning when to hold on and when to let go.

And I'm still finding reasons to be excited about a future I can't yet describe.

There are moments when I look back at the life I thought I'd be living and feel genuine sadness that it didn't turn out that way.

There are other moments when I look at the life I'm living now and feel something I hadn't expected.

Curiosity.

Possibility.

Sometimes even excitement.

Those feelings don't cancel each other out.

They coexist.

And perhaps that's what this album is really about.

Not choosing between the past and the future.

Not deciding that one life was good and another was bad.

Not pretending that the things we lost weren't worth loving.

But recognizing that all of those experiences belong to the same person.

Me.

The person who wrote the songs.

The person who lived the experiences that inspired them.

And the person who still has no idea what song he'll write next.

For the first time in a long time, I find that uncertainty rather exciting.

The lives we almost lived deserve to be remembered.

The life we're still living deserves to be loved.

And I'm looking forward to finding out what happens next.