Have Courage & Be Kind Little Dove

My parents tell me stories about driving home from taking me to see Disney movies, and in the theaters, they were noticing I was singing the songs from the film on the way home, in the car, but I was changing the lyrics and the melodies to be about my own life. As a little kid, I loved to sing. I loved to do children’s theater performances. But everything came together when I learned to play guitar at 12. I wrote my first song after learning my first three chords. It felt easy to work incredibly hard at this. It felt easy to nurture something I loved so much, to watch calluses form on the tips of my tiny fingers and to become a constant observer of the human condition. Because people’s feelings, passions, and motivations always fascinated me, and it was easy to choose songwriting over everything else in my life.  But it couldn’t have been easy for my parents and my brother—I’m good [crying]—to just pick up and move our entire family from Pennsylvania to relocate to Nashville so that I could hone my craft in the songwriting capital of the world. But after it became obvious that this was not even remotely a temporary phase their tween daughter was going through, they uprooted their entire lives to move me to Music City. And even though words are kind of supposed to be my thing, I will never be able to express my gratitude to you guys for doing that for me. You’re the reason I’m doing it.

In Nashville, I took meetings, and I played acoustic shows until I was able to secure a publishing deal. I got signed when I was 14—oh, thanks! And I got the chance to work with incredibly wise and experienced cowriters. People like Liz Rose, Troy Verges, Hillary Lindsey, Robert Ellis Orrall, Angelo, The Warren Brothers, and the late but so very loved Brett James. So I’d written over 100 songs on my own at that point, but this would be my first experience cowriting. My parents have raised me to be overprepared, show up early, never assume the world owes you anything. And I might have been 14 years old, but I didn’t want anyone in a professional setting to treat me like a baby, or for these songwriters to think that I expected them to write songs for me to slap my name on. So at this point, I started to approach songwriting like a full-time vocation. And that didn’t mean just showing up to my appointments and hoping the ideas would show up too. It meant spending nearly all of my free time writing ideas in preparation for my writing sessions, and then stopping myself at a certain point to allow my cowriters to later weigh in. So some of these ideas were fifty percent done, some were seventy-five percent done, some were just a hook with lyrics and a melody or a chorus. I stockpiled them, so that when I went into a writing session with a cowriter, I’d play them and sing them a few of these ideas, sort of like it was a pitch session, and whichever idea they liked the best is the one that we would finish together. I kept long lists of words that I loved, and I added to it every time I thought of a new one. I developed a serious fixation on alliterations and juxtaposition. And I wrote poems when I didn’t have the right melody yet.

When I was inspired by my own life, my curiosities about the world, or my very dramatic but extremely dire crushes on boys at school who had never even once talked to me, I wrote about that. And if I wasn’t inspired by my own life, I’d use other methods to spark my imagination. I figured, if the idea doesn’t come to you, you have to become your own search party and go find it. Oftentimes, I’d put a movie on. I’d pause a scene, and try to write a song from each character’s perspectives—even the villain. I’d explore what they were going through and try to say it in a vernacular that that character might use. And this is how I learned that every person has a self-constructed justification system that they live by, and we each get to decide what choices we’re willing to condone ourselves. We each decide what we see as good and true, fair and right. And so with my metaphorical Mary Poppins bag of hooks, choruses, and bridges, and my nonmetaphorical backpack from sophomore year of high school, I’d walk into my writing sessions on Music Row.

One of my favorite stories from this time in my life is when I got a chance to write with one of my favorite songwriters of all time, Craig Wiseman. Yep. Craig is an absolute savant of a writer, but he’s also one of the funniest people I’ve ever met too, so I know that I can tell this story. I brought in about five different semi-formed songs that I thought were really strong. Because it was Craig Wiseman, I led my pitch with a song I really thought was special. It was pretty much done except for a few lines in the bridge. So filled with nervous anticipation, I played it on guitar and sang it for him, and when I finished, he very kindly told me tht he thought it was good but he didn’t really get it, and he’d love to hear the other ideas I brought. A few songs later, we landed on one that resonated better with him, and we had a fantastic writing session. It turns out, you really can and should meet some of your heroes. But years later, we still look back on that session and we laugh about that first idea that I had played for him. I had ended up going home and finishing the song on my own later that night. It was called Love Story. Finishing that song that night was me trusting my instincts as a writer, regardless of any feedback or information I had about what other people’s take on it might be. I think now more than ever, in an industry that seems to be consumed by metrics, data, and analytics, and we’re all trying to predict whether something will trend or not, like, writers need to trust their human intuition. And I think the thousands of hours I’ve spent lovingly working at this craft have taught me to really be able to identify the ideas that jump out at me and sparkle and linger, the ones that matter to me the most.

I have to say thank you to Sombr for that perfect performance. And his writing is so exceptional that it makes me actually envious, and I love that feeling. He’s going to be the top of my Spotify Wrapped this year, guaranteed, like it’s locked, it’s in the bag. A lot of my late night debates with my friends about the state of the music industry involve me saying very loudly, ‘Sombr is the future and he does it all on his own and he doesn’t need AI. The kids are fine.’ And so obviously, Shane is a very well-adjusted person and artist, and doesn’t need any of my advice at all. There are so many incredible writers that I love who have come into their own recently, and if I had advice for young artists, though, who should perhaps be interested in it, I would say that you really have to prioritize what you love down to your very core, because you’ll need that if your song ever gets heard by the public, or the critics, or the haters posing as critics, or the people who are chronically online, or the robots posing as people who are chronically online. Songwriters have a real balancing act that they have to conduct every day, because inherently, we’re supposed to let it all in, feel deeply and sensitively to the point of near-delusion, and then reflect those feelings and delusions back to the world in the form of a three-and-a-half minute sonic landscape, or a ballad, or a folk tale, or a battle cry, or a 10-minute coming-of-age song about a scarf.

So it’s hard to harden yourself to certain brutal elements of this world, but allow me to now make a hard pivot and pull out a quote I love from the show Yellowstone: ‘When a father says to his son, it’s the one constant in life, son. You build something worth having; somebody’s gonna try to take it.’ Thank you, thank you very much, thank you. So, John Dutton was talking about a ranch, but I’m using this quote to refer to your self-worth, your peace of mind, and your singular vision as a creator. Positive feedback and people loving what you wrote feels incredible, and I hope you get lots of it. But you need to be ready to receive negative feedback, whether you seek it out or not. It’s no longer a shock that this is how things work, but sometimes it feels like I have this conversation with a young writer every other week. If you make anything awesome, someone out there is going to say horrible things about it, or twist what you meant into something completely unrecognizable to you. What I hope you discover is this: You can be sensitive, but also durable. And you can accept that feedback, and skepticism, and criticism are inevitable. You can take what’s useful or constructive from that information, and leave out what’s simply damaging to your creativity. No one does or should make art that appeals to everyone, everywhere, all the time. My favorite art is detailed and singular in its voice, therefore it can’t be digested and metabolized by everyone who experiences it in the same way. I’m very frequently told by people how they feel about my music, that they never really got my music until they got their heart broken, or started driving their daughter to school every day, or until I made an alternative album in the pandemic called folklore, or that they only like the hits, or that they only liked the ones that weren’t hits, or that they don’t like any of it at all. But it doesn’t feel uncomfortable for me to get feedback of all sorts because I know where I stand regarding the work I’ve made.

As writers, we can only hope to meet people where they are in their lives, but you can’t ever orchestrate or force the encounter. You just have to hope that in some exquisite happenstance, you bump into them on the same path at the same time, that somehow, amidst the noise of life, a line we wrote or a melody that we crafted cuts through, and they hear it and they feel something, that they get chills or feel lighter or think of someone they love. Our goal is to elicit that glint of recognition in another human being, because something that felt good and true to us feels good and true to them in the same time. And in that moment, when someone blurts out, ‘I love this song,’ it was easy.

Before I go, there are so many people who helped me get to this podium, who vouched for my writing and cared about my perspective before anyone cared about my name. And then the fans came along, and they wanted to hear my stories, my prose, my hooks, my heartache, and nothing, nothing delights and surprises me more than the fact that 20 years after my first song came out, they still want to read the next chapter. Nothing makes me happier than when someone tells me that they used to listen to my music with their parent, and now, decades later, they listen to it with their own child. [crying] I’m good. Or that they listen to it with their best friend, or when a couple tells me that Love Story is their song, or somebody does a cute little dance to The Fate of Ophelia, or I hear people in different countries singing Opalite in their own accents, or someone tells me that the song Enchanted gets their baby to stop crying. It’s, I’m humbled by the ways that fans have immortalized my songs in their own individual ways, allowing them to be the underscore of some of their real life expeditions on this Earth, the magnificent moments, as important to me as the seemingly mundane. Lastly, I know that when it comes to legacy, there are so many songwriters who have had such remarkable careers before me, and I know that the Songwriters Hall of Fame could have chosen any of these deserving and brilliant writers to receive this honor this year, but you chose to include me in this group of exemplary songwriters to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, class of 2026 tonight. So I want to thank the voters for celebrating and honoring the best and trust parts of my life. I will be forever grateful. Have a good night guys! Thank you!"

Artanis. The voice in her mind cannot touch her she reminds herself. It is far away and still, still a part of her can feel herself fold into familiar obedient shapes - to placate, to apologise and plead. Artanis you and my sweet silver prince forget who you belong to, my darlings, my precious loves. That he would touch you - I will flay all of him into shreds and scatter those shrieking to the winds of the world so they might hear his lament. 

She is safe in Lorien with her husbands. She is safe. He can no longer touch her. It is a refrain that she must repeat and she hates that all the worse for the way it does not help tonight. Sauron scrabbles at the edge of her mind - he cannot reach her exactly but at the same time he can speak to her sometimes. Can send visions. And it hurts. 

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"I'm here to tell you this" Sedril says "because I want all of you and I mean all of you to get whatever disgust or pity or emotional reactions that make this about yourself out of the way before you talk to any of them. I mean it. They are fragile enough without feeling as though they have done something awful to any of you."

"Why are Disa and Cirdan not here then? And Narvi for that matter? Where is he?"

"Because King Durin, Queen Disa, Narvi and Lord Cirdan know when to ask for advice and far better how to speak." 

Durin sits back down with only a slight huffing noise and Gil-galad admits to feeling some petty amusement. 

"I'm not going to break their privacy and tell you everything but I need you to realise that none of them and I mean none of them are as they were before - you saw a little, High King in your brief visit but I need you to truly understand. None of them are as they were. Every one of them is dangerously malnourished and have healing broken bones. You will see bite marks. Lord Celebrimbor is missing a thumb and he in particular has scars everywhere."

"I'm going to find Sauron and he's going to wish I'll kill him. And I'll start with…"

"King Durin. Respectfully. If you get angry like this near Elrond it will make him worse than he is. Process it here." 

"They are not going to be able to make choices - they will panic at them for a long time. They will flinch and they may not believe any of you are real. They will have nightmares and moments where they are not here at all. And of course, the brands." 

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The new overseer looks at you strangely - not as though he wants to get under your skirts strange - but as though you are his somehow. Vainiel says it to Alacénima under the cover of delivering her her meal for the day (they want her to stay in the vault, to see to the accounts) because she worries about her. Alacénima might be far far far older than Vainiel is (she's been here for hundreds of years, one of the other women had told Vainiel - she and her fathers) but Vainiel only looks at her and sees a slender silver haired girl who tries to live up to her name but cares too much to truly do so. 

Thank you, she says. I'll make sure I'll avoid him if I can. 

And it's true, the new overseer doesn't look at Alacénima like he wants to fuck her but he does look at her as though she belongs to him. Like the master looks at his daughters, Vainiel thinks (she's training to be a maid to one of them - it's a way out and some measure of security because the girl is fond of her already though she'll likely be sent away with her to her husbands house) - a pure sweet thing you keep in a pretty cage and tell them it's protection. 

And it's all wrong for Alacénima. Vainiel does know exactly why the new overseer (Hrothgar) doesn't see it because masters never like to see slaves as people but it's a new one to her, this way of seeing. 

Hrothgar likes to glare at anyone who goes near Alacénima or her father. Fathers. Though his glare has changed towards Sindion* towards Halbrand it remains the same. If not worse. It's strange. All of it. 

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Galadriel ends up hacking off her hair herself (she had snuck a pair of scissors that one of the healers had dropped accidentally). Annoyingly her hands are trembling the whole time but she does it because at least this way, she can say it was all her doing and if this isn't real then it might help when Sauron finds her surrounded by cut hair and glaring. 

Just to her waist. It had been pooling at her feet before - coiled and he had liked it adorned with flowers and jewels and chains until her head had ached with the weight and now, now she is terrified but she is free of it. 

Eventually she even manages to tidy the ends and braid it. Just a simple braid from back when she was allowed them. Her hands shake the whole time and she is irritated at all of it but she had done it. She had done it and there might be something of Galadriel, Commander of the Armies of the North and Princess of the House of Finarfin in her still, except that is absurd. She trembles in terror at cutting and braiding her hair - how can she ever be what she was again? How can she ever look at anyone again. 

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Celebrimbor looks at the weight of the hair that pools about him, that he had once said he felt he missed and throws up everything he has been given to eat. He cannot bear it but he cannot get rid of it - Sauron will hurt someone because of him again and surely, surely this can be his penance - if they are going to order him killed then he should go as a Feanorian, a traitor to his family twice over and worse than any of them but he has been marked as one. And maybe he can stop himself from hurting anyone else. 

He stops eating again. Perhaps that is an easier death than he deserves but he cannot and he should not. 

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Celeborn has ceded control of his body for so long he is not even sure he knows how to use it for himself. They had thought they would be safe in the tiny village in Orophers domains. He had worried more for Galadriel, in truth and she had teased him about silver clams because for all they had mourned and lost then they had still had the certainty of each other. 

And then the raid had come, at the outskirts of the war - no desperate last stand but a petty thing - slave traders looking for goods. He remembers hearing their disappointment and glee mingled that they had found elves - if you can make sure they don't slip away then they'll make you riches enough for generations - but you have to make sure they don't and there's no guarantee. 

He managed to keep Celebrian alive and with him on that horrible first months of slavery because there was no other option for him. The slavers had given him another name ("Sindion") and when they had seen that the elfling who he had in a wrap upon his chest had kept him alive they had allowed her to be fed. 

Celeborn knows his precious girl feels guilt at that but he has only ever felt regret for the guilt, not that he lived for her. The mines were brief and awful and those captured with them faded away but Sindion and Alacenima do not. Celeborn whispers his daughters true name to her. My sunrise he calls her, as Mairon calls her rainbow (and rabbit, which is the first time Celeborn has truly laughed in a very long time but she does look like a little bundled rabbit in Mairons arms - he tries not to think of how it makes him feel to see her safe in them and how beautiful Mairon is). 

So it does not occur to him to cut his hair. The slavers had shorn his hair for the mines (it was meant to mark the mine slaves out though how they could be mistaken for anything other than what they were even with hair had never made sense) and then let it grow when they realised he would survive and would be an asset. House Harrêdul tended to keep his hair at a practical length - one master when Celebrian was eleven had wanted it long but not as long as Sauron did. 

His hair pools at his feet now and the weight of it hurts but it had not occurred to him that he might be allowed to chosefor he has forgotten so much of that. In Rhûn as with Sauron it had always been the masters decision. 

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"I'm going to have to cut your hair - to make sure we can dress your wounds."

Sedril is gentle with Elrond but in the matter of fact way that she is with any fellow healer and he appreciates it, even if he cannot imagine being that Elrond - who had been Herald and Healer both - ever again. It seems an entirely impossible concept, as though someone had told him that he might become an oliphaunt who could fly all the way to Arien. But it does matter to him that there is no patronising pity when Sedril speaks to him. To them. 

(No fear either nor hate). 

"You can do it yourself, I can or perhaps, Celebrian could."

Celebrian, he signs and hates himself because he cannot risk her. He cannot. Not for this. 

But she looks at him, the way she does in such understanding and signs back of course I can do it - I can explain it away if we are still in his keeping after all and she is right. She is right. 

It's still awful and wonderful all at once, the process of cutting the hair that had been forcibly grown. 

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Finrod does remember his hair before - he had walked out of Mandos with it short because the weight of it in that stinking fetid cell - a tangled itching snarl (Beren had laughed, a little and said that it still wasn't as bad as his was before he had stumbled into Doriath and Finrod is still unsure if that was love speaking because it had been disgusting) and now it is clean and shining and he thinks he may hate it worse than the snarl. 

He must be well. He must be. Truly he must be. 

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Finding Estel a league or more from Rivendell was a surprise but then it was also very much not a surprise. This little one is not the twins (who would and could manage mischief enough for five and truthfully, it warmed their families heart to see them so carefree - for it was never mean spirited) but he is determined and of course, of course Adar thinks he would walk so far. 

"I'm going to help. Or I was going to help but the Rangers said I should go home but I'm very good at tracking and walking and Karbazír says I am very very quiet."

"You are very good Estel. But sometimes the bravest and wisest thing a ranger can do is to stay home and look after themselves."

"And I'll look after my family! You and Grandpa Cirdan and everyone!" 

(How Estel managed to have boundless energy after walking so far is a sign that he is truly, somehow an inheritor of Freyja's in that regard - Adar can think it without pain mostly these days but still, it hurts). 

"Perhaps but would the brave ranger wish to be carried some of the way home?"

"A Ranger should always be upon their feet is what Karbazír and Ashuruk say anyway." 

Estel falls asleep on Adars shoulder halfway home and Adar makes a note to have a word with some of the dwarves if they ever return to Rivendell - they should know better than to fill a childs head with the idea of adventures and quests. There will be enough peril for little Estel when he grows.