Anahata

Open Matt's latest album Anahata:

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About Anahata:

The 2nd year of grieving the loss of my wife, Brooke, has been a journey of self-discovery.  I have looked backwards - into past trauma.  I have looked outward and inward - for a sense of spirituality.  And I have looked forward - toward a life without Brooke. 

Below are the songs from Anahata and their descriptions in the order in which they were written:

"Phoenix": At 52, it was hard to understand why childhood trauma would rear its ugly head, but that's exactly what happened during this song.  I had not repressed the memories, but I definitely did not appreciate the degree to which trauma had affected me and guided the course of my life.  I found that I was not alone in making this connection in my 50s and that 1 in 6 men have had similar trauma. At the point where I finished the song, I definitely only felt like I was the ashes of a Phoenix, thought now I do feel I've risen.

"Catalyzed": Upon further sitting with trauma, I realized I had to do just that: Sit with the trauma; try to coexist with it without intention of moving away from it; make peace with it. I also realized that as much as my trauma has affected my life for the worse, including the catalyst for my first suicidal ideations and my substance abuse, it has also shaped my life as a creative.  It is directly responsible for the songs "Phoenix" and "Catalyzed", and much of the pain  and trauma in my life is responsible for much of my creativity.  I'm sure the same is true for many other artists.

"Motif":  Much of the feeling of the first year of grief is "What am I going to do without them?", while the second year is spent asking "No, seriously, what am I going to do now?!?".  I've decided to dedicate the next portion of my life to the pursuit of growing positive community.  Especially through music and arts.  And especially as it helps people with mental illness, trauma, and substance abuse issues.

"Scales": After a beautiful conversation with two of my favorite Libra friends, I was inspired to write this piece.  My friends are poets and were lamenting about how pieces come to them at inopportune times and they have to rush to get them down on paper...and how writing can take almost an hour.  Meanwhile, my pieces take days and sometimes weeks to compose!   To prove to myself, and them, that I could write quickly with proper inspiration, I wrote the basis of this song in a few hours later that evening, though fleshing out the arrangement and dynamics did take a bit longer.  There are 3 main parts to the song, each representing one of us.

"Armored Soul":  This is what is inside a Weathered Knight.  A soul that has a sort of porous protection that can allow love and energy flow freely with others. Or that can cinch up tight to let nothing in or out.

"The Weight": In grieving, even after a year or more in, we don't get to choose how heavy the grief is or when it will come and go.  During one of the most intense portions of my grieving, I found myself running around as fast as I could trying to find a solution that would dissipate the pain. To no avail.  I just found myself tired, no less in pain, and coming to an understanding that I would just have to wait until the pain passed on its own.

"Anahata": I have done much chakra work in the last years, and many massive pushes were necessary in the area of the Heart Chakra (Anahata).  At the point this song was written, I was having chest pains that I imagined could have led to "Heartbreak Syndrome", where a husband dies shortly after losing their wife (or vice versa). In meditation, I had to make the decision that if I truly loved Brooke, my kids, and this world, I would have to make a definitive decision to stay...which I did.  This seemed to dissipate a majority of the pain and tightness in my chest, so I know it was at least one key to unblocking this chakra.

"Disparage Non Amplius": This is a command to stop disparaging, translated from Latin as "disparage no more".  I was in some situations where I held resentments against some friends and they would not resolve and I could make no further amends without causing further harm.  I came to the word "disparage" in a discussion about these situations and about my friends and I realized that in trying to understand and fix these situations, I was really just bad-mouthing my friends, living in the problem, and finding no further solutions. I had to stop talking about them to stop thinking about them to stop living in the problem and stop digging deeper "grooves" in my brain pathways.  I have utilized this technique many times since this discovery and it quickly brings relief and peace.  I also came to understand that "disparage" is the opposite of "exalt", which is the opposite of what I want to do in creating positive communities and relationships.  

"Child's Play": In doing "inner child" and "shadow work", I came to a dilemma which was that I didn't know how to help my inner child(s) heal once I understood what they needed.  But, much like raising my actual children, I only had to show them the basic path as I knew it, and they would take the direction and flourish in ways  I couldn't imagine.  This song has many call and responses where I play a basic version of a part (my direction), then a more complex and exciting version (my inner child's extrapolation).

"Anticipatory": Having spent 4 years of my life with a wife who was in and out of cancer remission, it became apparent that I may need to prepare for the worst.  Anticipatory grief is very common for people in this type of situation as an attempt to prepare for the what may come.  What happened instead, for me, is that the preparation type of grief got "wrapped around" situations that had a similar, but less severe, emotional dynamic of: anticipating some event, not knowing fully what that event will be/feel like, then having no idea what will happen after.  This lead me to be disproportionately triggered in situations like stage fright, job interviews, and 1st dates. Understanding the correlation helped me be less activated in these situations.

"Shelter":  Living in the house where Brooke and I lived, and where she died, did not seemed to be a burden to me...intellectually.  But subconsciously, it was taking a toll, especially around month 18 after her passing.  Though I worked aggressively on grief on the inside, I kept waking up to everything looking exactly as it was on the day she died.  I always described it as though I was living in a museum, but it was really more like living in a haunted house.  I was also driving her Mini Cooper every day:  I would say to myself "Well, this is my dead wife's car" everytime I got in it, then proceeded to drive it around all day.  I decided to rearrange and redecorate the house, and trade the Mini in for a new car (EV Subaru Solterra). It was all daunting, but it has made a real difference in my healing trajectory.

"Kama Psoas 2-12": This song is about three interrelated subjects:  The first is the Sacral Chakra which is located at below the navel and is responsible for sensuality, or Kama.  The second is the Psoas muscles, which are considered to be the primary seat of stored trauma due to their bidirectional relationship with the fight or flight system; they wrap from the lower spine around to the front of the hips, basically surrounding the Sacral Chakra. The third is inner child work I did with my 2 year old and 12 year old selves, especially in regard to my anxious attachment style; I needed to get good with affection needs being inconsistently met as a young child (very typical) and my romantic trials and tribulations as a pubescent tween; the ages of 2 and 12 are also the same ages that the Sacral Chakra first develops then has a growth phase, respectively.

If you want to know even more about my music, please reach out to me at matt@mattmillecchia.com  

Matt Millecchia