That makes me think of your song, “Move Me,” which has that emotional urgency you were talking about earlier. Was that a cathartic song to write?
Yeah, I think there’s a hope for healing in all the songs on the album, Young in all the Wrong Ways. There’s a frustration, but a hope that in moving forward, you’ll be able to work through it, and get to the other side of it, and move past your comfort zone.
I think a lot of Young in All the Wrong Ways was written while I was becoming aware that I was at a point in my life where I realized, “Oh, I could just stay this person for the next five years very easily.” I could just go to the same places, go to the same restaurants, listen to the same music, think the same thoughts, have the same opinions. I can chill here for a while. I was feeling really comfortable. And it was kind of terrifying. Because I don’t want that… There’s time for that when you’re far older, but I’m not ready.
I don’t want to be the same person in five years… I don’t want to be repeating myself or quoting the same people or arguing the same points. I want to try to respond to the world as if I’ll stay and be challenged by things that make me uncomfortable and analyze “Why does that make me feel uncomfortable?” and not take that as a cue that it’s something I don’t like, but instead, something to be curious about.
And I think it spans into every area of my life.So that album is not necessarily about a romantic relationship, but my relationship with myself, and my relationship with the world around me, and not wanting to get stuck, but instead being willing to start the engines and see the turbulence, and recognize that that’s positive confirmation of forward motion that I was really craving.
“Move Me” came from a few different things.I was flying into Miami late at night, and I was looking down at the lights, and the coast of Florida is full of nooks and crannies, and gorgeous swamplands and bays. But from the sky at nighttime, all that you see are the square straight lines and straight angles. It’s like a connect the dots of the coastline. And I thought, “That’s so typical. That’s what humans do. We want things to be clear and straight. And that works for us. That’s helpful for us. Obviously, we want our telephone lines to run the most efficient path, from A to B. But that doesn’t necessarily benefit us in other areas of our life. So then I started exploring that a little bit.
One one last question: Do you use Dropbox. If so, how do you use it?
I’m an avid Dropbox user… I use it to send large audio files—large files of any kind, really, but mainly audio files like album mixes that I store on Dropbox and save to my device. About a year and a half ago when I’m With Her (the collaborative project with Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O’Donovan Ed.) was getting a bunch of demos together, we shared them on Dropbox and accessed them all that way.
To learn more about Sara and her latest album, Young In All The Wrong Ways, go to sarawatkins.com.
To find out how Dropbox can help you find focus and finish your creative projects faster, check out Dropbox Paper.