For my best friend’s birthday, she asked the girl group whether we might want to do a trip away, perhaps to Dublin or Paris. Fresh off a conversation with BC,NR bandmate Georgia, she had seen a play at the Barbican and said it was one of the best she’d seen. Intrigued, I looked it up and saw that the only place it was still playing was in Riga, Latvia, on the weekend my friend had proposed. I highjacked the plan and a few weeks later we were bound for the Baltics.

It was hard not to feel some trepidation as the night of the play approached — how could I not feel responsible for my friend’s enjoying it. Before the show one friend reads out a review on X stating it was the loudest, longest play I’ve ever seen’. I would argue it was an illicit move to read out a review 20 minutes before it started. But four hours later, it was hard to deny: it was long and incredibly loud.

The play was called Rohtko, by director Łukasz Twarkowski. The rough premise was based on these fake Rothko paintings being sold for millions of dollars between 1994 and 2011. It explored the relationship between art and money, and the value of original pieces and copies. Twarkowski said in an interview that it was influenced by a book on Chinese art, stating that, ‘In Chinese art history, copies have often surpassed the originals in value, as they were considered better crafted or more faithful to the underlying idea.’ The play also went on to bring up art in today’s world, NFTs and such. Without a doubt, it was very visually and aurally stimulating, though for me, it was a little incoherent at times. It did make me think about the importance I place in an ‘original’ work and my motivations for writing, and whether me striving to write original unique music is as ego-fuelled as I’ve begun to suspect it might be.

Between tours, I’ve been working on two new ideas. I’d say they are somewhere between being originals and reworkings of other people’s music that floats around unconsciously in my brain. It would be great to finish them before I go on tour, however, if I don’t manage to finish a song in a few days, it will most likely end up in my spare-parts junk box where I already have lots of half-finished ideas for songs. Sometimes when I feel more inspired to write, I’ll make a song out of different parts from the junk box.

In general, I find it easier when the words for a song come first and I write the music to those lyrics. This time with one of the songs, the piano part and melody came first and I had to try and puzzle solve the lyrics around that. The other song came when I was in a bad mood; I’m now out of the bad mood and don’t feel like finishing it.

Whether I finish these or if they will reform to become another piece, I will wait to find out. I have found that my better songs are the ones that I write in a shorter space of time, and I often flip between thinking that I should push myself to finish something even if I don’t totally believe in it, and on the other hand, thinking that I should only be working on things that I really do believe in. Anyway I have strayed a little from beginning of the post, but to circle back, I think relinquishing the idea that a song has to be unique to be great is a liberating thing for me. (I fear I might disagree with this tomorrow… but this is where I stand today.) And don’t regret dragging your friends across Europe to see — you can always watch Bridget Jones after the show (which is how we ended the night).