sometimes people ask me what my songs are about. I usually say something vague —the city, life stuff, you know? — because the real answer feels too tangled to unwrap in small talk.
the truth is, they’re personal. not metaphorical or abstract. they’re about Brooklyn. about skateboarding past street corners where dealers post up. about clinics and waiting rooms. about depression, addiction, and trying to untangle both at once. about feeling in love and lonely in the same breath.
they’re about sitting in group therapy while someone shares the exact thing you’ve been too scared to say. they’re about riding my bike home after, headphones on, wondering if anyone outside that room would understand.
and still, I share them. I play them out loud, let them live outside my head for a while. but what they mean to other people — that part I don’t really know. I don’t know if someone who’s never been through it hears the same weight in the lines. or if someone with a safe, steady life hears my songs and just thinks, pretty melody, and moves on.
maybe that used to scare me more. now, I think it’s okay.
because even if we’re walking different streets, we’re all people. we all wait for test results. we all wake up some mornings and want to disappear. we all look for ways to feel less alone, more real, more seen. my songs come from my life, but I have to believe they land in other lives, too — even if just as a flicker. even if someone doesn’t know why a certain line sticks with them, only that it does.
and maybe, if the songs don’t resonate now, they will later. maybe one day — on a quiet night or in the middle of something hard — someone will remember a line, or a feeling, and realize they’re not the only one. maybe that’s what the songs are. not answers, not cures. just company. a kind of consolation.
so I’ll keep writing. about streets that never feel safe — maybe because I’m not. the fears I carry. the pull to leave, and the harder pull to stay. and maybe, somewhere in all that, someone else hears their own story echo back. and feels — just for a moment — a little less alone.
this one’s called heaDPHonED. it’s about everything all at once—the light, the ache, the quiet moments that almost feel like safety. there really are deer by the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge.
cookie nieves 
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