My name is Holly Blair. Nobody teaches you how to love. At least, those are the words that rotated around my mind during the sleepless nights of my early 20s after I read them in Rilke’s Letters To A Young Poet. I revisited that book often in that time in an effort to make sense of the ending of my first queer relationship while also trying to understand my place in this world as a young artist.
I had found it deeply confusing how a relationship that had so much love also contained multitudes of feelings that ranged far beyond the story book picture of love we are taught from a young age. Conflict, or rather conflict resolution, was never modeled to me.
So, when presented with the option to stay and work through the difficulties that inevitably came with two humans trying to learn to love, really love, for the first time, my instinct was to flee. I wrestled with this for much of my 20s, backing away from any serious relationship that came my way, in fear of repeating the same patterns.
I returned instead to the tired and heavy trope of practicing being “good,” and carrying around with me a deep and subconscious belief that I was not living up to the flawed value system I inherited somewhere along the way. This EP, Then Comes The Lightning is the first moment in my life where the columns that had held the house up for so long, echoing the words “be a good girl,” started to shake.
This body of work represents a time of self-honesty and painful growth, perhaps for the first time in my life. I wrote this EP when all signs in me were pointing to a forest fire. I knew it needed to break not bend, to burn down to the root if I wanted something new to grow.
These songs came from visions and dreams, from conversations with friends, from quiet moments spent alone with my instruments. The themes vary from deeply personal to universal, spanning from my fears surrounding Artificial Intelligence in the track “Used to Dying,” to dealing with the cycles of narcissistic love and drugs in “Line Again,” to both laughing and grieving through writing “Baby Girl He’s So Boring.”
It came from moments of finally understanding my own neuro-divergence in the song “Loud,” and from the turbulent period of time right before I chose to get sober in the track “Slow.” It came from the part of me that had lived quietly in the shadows waiting for its day in the light.
This EP is the first moment where I can see the parts of me left hidden for so long starting to take shape, and in large part due to my collaborators on it. I made this EP with friends who sat with me without judgment and helped me craft, idea by idea.
Caleb Knott of BROODS, and Kyle Berzle worked with me on the first three tracks, Michael Coleman (Sure Sure, Abby Sage) produced “Baby Girl He’s So Boring,” and Mark McKenna, the Irish actor and lead singer of the band Milk, produced “Loud.” Finally, on my favorite track of the EP “Line Again” my best friend Charlotte Reed and I produced it in her basement one quiet and late night.
When I look back at this EP I am reminded of the words from “Slow,” when I sing, “Spit the rocks out my mouth so I can make a sound.” That’s what this EP is, it’s me, meeting me for the first time. Out on all platforms now <3 Listen to Then Comes The Lightning below, and stream it elsewhere here.
