Amongst the little things that make life super nice I’d count this one: when I listen to Pandora and Pandora surprises me with the Nields. Full disclosure: Nerissa and Katryna are amongst my most talented real-life friends, yet I was a fan long before that was the case.
No surprise then that my excitement for a new recording with a title I can relate to—Full Catastrophe—has me happy, for the music I get to listen to and for my friends’ next musical adventures.
I also took the opportunity to ask Nerissa a couple of questions I’d felt curious about anyway.
Me: How did this recording come about?
Nerissa: I’m a prolific songwriter. I don’t focus on a theme. I write about what I want, so it’s motherhood and marriage and the community and the world, all of it. The songs, though, came from a period when my kids—now almost six and three-and-a-half—were newer and at that time I was so surprised by the hugeness of my joy and my love for them and I was so overwhelmed by exhaustion caused by those small beings I loved so. The everything had grown: how to be awake and aware on the floor making up games with the kids, but also making a living, having a social life, spending time with my husband, and being an artist?
Me: How, indeed!
Nerissa: It was humbling to fail at all of it every single day. I felt so joined with my two year-old when we crumpled into a heap at the end of the day totally exhausted.
The second song Back at the Fruit Tree talks about that everything, how it changed with kids and all the balances were upended, like work and play, and the creative and the livelihood. Tom, my husband, went back to school. I was supporting three then four of us. I’m a person who requires a lot of spiritual sustenance—time alone, time to hike, to read, to connect with friends, and to spend time with God—and these two small beings and my husband made it feel like I was down to bare branches. I had to surrender.
Me: Surrender is hard to prepare for; it’s impossible, even. What else surprised you?
Nerissa: I think how much I worried about the possibility of losses and how fear affected my ability to enjoy the moments. I was so in love with the sense of communion I felt with my babies before they could talk. I worried I would lose that sense of connection. Fear the Gap is about that. The connections we feel last when we realize that conflicts and yelling, that’s part of our experience—I think it’s post-happiness—and we have to embrace the ways we grow. Life is richer when we are unafraid.
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Did I mention she’s a wise gal? She so is. Some of that wisdom, obviously, spills into the music (made beautiful in large part because of her joyful collaboration with her sister Katryna).
