what i love most is that psyche does not become divine at the beginning.

she becomes divine after everything.

after doubt. after loss. after humiliation. after work.

as if the myth is saying:

the soul is not fragile because it breaks.

Half Waif | Horse Racing

we’ve been hiding in our habits what did we think was gonna happen? someone else is always worse off we’re just finding our way, can’t you see i’m holding i can’t believe i’m holding out and i’m not trying to make you nervous but i think that we deserve this

‘Sodium & Cigarettes’ is the latest single from Half Waif’s forthcoming album Mythopoetics, set for release next month. Nandi Rose, the New York artist who performs as Half Waif, is known for her ethereal vocals that recall Kate Bush, Sinead O’Connor and contemporaries such as Phoebe Bridgers and Adrienne Lenker. 

Describing the new song, Nandi Rose explained:

Sodium & Cigarettes follows the theme of many of the tracks on Mythopoetics and deals with the recognition that no one is going to magically save us or pull us out of our misery. The chorus “okay, give it another day” is something I say to myself when I’ve had a really awful day and everything feels like a wash. It’s a deep breath and a stab at courage — I can face tomorrow, and who knows what possibilities for joy and growth that will bring. While working on the album during the Democratic Primary in early 2020, the song took on new meaning for me in light of political conversations. “I believe in something more than what’s in front of me” became a commentary on people saying, ‘well, this system is what we’ve got and you can’t ask for more.’ I firmly believe that we have to fight for the world we imagine, that everything is possible. So this song is really a quiet encouragement for me, a way to tell myself to stop running, to face what’s coming with clarity and vision and courage, to know there’s another tomorrow.

not as an ornament. not as something delicate for aesthetic effect. but because psyche means soul, and the butterfly is a body that has already died once and reassembled itself.

a caterpillar doesn’t “grow” wings. it dissolves. it becomes almost unrecognizable inside the chrysalis. its old structure breaks down into something cellular and uncertain before anything new forms.

that feels important.

if eros is the force that binds, psyche is the thing that transforms under pressure and still emerges capable of flight.

love and hope, maybe, are hidden there.

not in never breaking.

grain that cannot be sorted. distances that cannot be crossed. things that should be impossible.

and yet the myth keeps returning to the same image:

her hands, doing the work.

small, human hands touching things that do not scale to her.

i think hope looks like that sometimes.

he’s attraction itself.

the pull between things that should remain separate.

which makes it very fitting that he loves psyche.

because the soul is always reaching. always searching for connection.

it’s like the myth pairs two forces that were always meant to find each other: