***Trigger Warning*** This email is sad and intense. Read at your own risk.

I wrote a song 15 years ago that still hasn't been released.

It's a sad, melancholic song about death, written at a time when I hadn't lost anyone close to me yet.

We used to perform it in The Long Wait before the band broke up, and you could often see people crying in the audience.

"Haven't lost a soul; still I feel for you," I would sing to the mourning girl in the song.

When I wrote that, it was true. I was young, and death wasn't interested in the people around me yet.

Since writing the song about not knowing loss, I lost my friend, Alan Garr, the founding band member of The Long Wait. The greatest songwriter the world would never get to know. 

We were halfway through an EP and it crushed us. It took us two years to put the pieces of our band back together.

He had been sober for ten years, but I wonder if the damage to his body had already been done.

After that, I lost my uncle to cancer.

He introduced me to online marketing when I was 13. You can guess how influential that was.

It was odd how hard it hit me. I broke down in my wife's arms, and then my coping mechanism kicked in, and I started cackling. Laughter helps you feel better, even if you sound like a delirious Joker doing it.

Then, my closest cousin died unexpectedly.

He was only two years older than me. We were "entrepreneurs" once, kids opening gates for cars for tips. Terrible way to make extra cash, but we were 10.

Then, they found a body in a Harlem apartment.

It had been decomposing for a couple of weeks. It was my childhood friend and the first bandmate I ever had. It's still hard to talk about because a part of me blames myself for not trying to help him more.

He was a boxer, and every time I box in VR, I throw a punch for him.

Since I wrote that song, my story has changed. It's not me who sings that song. It's the narrator of a story I once knew.

I originally wrote the song for an ex who had lost her dog. She had also lost her closest cousin and best friend shortly before that, so the pain of mourning was fresh and raw, like an open wound.

And this song helped her. And in an odd way, I think it might help the crying people in the audience when we used to sing it.

That's what music is right? A delivery mechanism for emotion?

So isn't it my responsibility to share it with people it can help?

That's why today I'm rehearsing with a rhythm section. We're booked in the studio in December, and I want us to be ready.

Hopefully, I'll share the song with you soon.

In the meantime, I know you're not here for my sob stories, so here's the 8-Step Process for Finishing More Music.

Take care,

Björgvin