Artist of the Week: SIRMA’s Reflection

For the final segment of SIRMA’s Artist of the Week, SIRMA reflected on what it’s like to be a musician and her recently released EP, “To Love.” Read her reflection below.

It was near the end of the year 2014. I was at a point in my life where it felt like everything was wide open. And when everything is wide open there are really two options… You can either be intimidated by the openness, or you can embrace the ambiguity of it and draw your own path within. I was intimidated. So, I hid in my room for weeks and months. Wrote songs, recorded demos… For a moment there, it felt like I could embrace the openness after all. I had done it once before, when I moved to the US as a teenager. How come I lacked that courage years later? I could feel that my renewed sense of reality was weighing on me. I was growing up, and my dreams were growing dull. Then- a revelation. If there was one thing I could control, it was what I created. So, I began to obsess over every creation. I recorded, then re-recorded so many demos, so many vocal takes that I eventually lost count. I spent hours, days, staring at my computer screen, comping, editing… I strived for perfection, but my sense of “perfection” was changing every day. I set out an unachievable goal for myself, but I was obsessed with obsessing anyway.

“To Love” is a brief summary of how I become infatuated with a person: in attraction, in lust and in passion. But, it’s also the resolution of my complicated relationship with music over the years. I don’t even remember how I finally made the decision to release this record, but for a minute there, I thought it would always remain a secret. It took a lot of strength to finally say “It’s done.” – and even when I said it, I doubted myself. I waited for a very long time to release it, to make sure I had made my peace with it. But once it was out, I felt silly, for taking it so seriously, to the point where I confined my creativity along the way. It feels like “To Love” was a step I had to take to leave my intimidated self behind. Now, my creative path seems as ambiguous as it can be- but I kind of like it that way.