premiere - “bite” by lou roy

how do we reckon with those difficult feelings we can barely articulate?

the best songs do this work for us. and so they stick.

“bite” by lou roy has stuck with me, since first listen. there is a kind of work of art i find most powerful at this moment in my life, in my burgeoning adulthood so saturated with self-awareness and yet so shrouded in mysteries of hurt and longing. the work i come back to again and again and turn over and over in my mind is work that points to something inside me i’ve been looking for without even quite knowing it was there. a moment of identification. a gentle index finger to the chest. an unexpected mirror in an unfamiliar place. 

we look inward to find clues, far enough along in the 21st century that we feel a duty to ourselves and to others to unearth the roots of the ways we cause pain. the ways we feel pain, too. we always hurt the ones we love, and so we hurt ourselves.

“bite” speaks of love and lashing out, of vulnerability and violence, of the wounds that run through the bottom of everything, and of goodwill, perhaps, above all. there is accountability, ownership, passion, apology. tenderness, like a bruise or a kiss. an as yet unasked question, a kind of gentle good faith. an unexpected optimism, fragile but grounded like a seed in soil.

a thought that maybe even in laying bare the worst in ourselves, we can still ask for love.

and it’ll be given.