Waylon

Process Journal/ reflection about an unreleased song

Laurie Ray, 9/8/22

We put out our first EP a month ago and are planning and writing our first full length album. One of the songs that will be on that full length whenever it comes out will be Waylon. If you’ve heard us play live in the last few months, you’ve heard this tune in our set list rotation.

Waylon is about the breakup that Waiting in the Wings predicts and begs not to happen. We were off and on and then off again and not in quiet ways. It was a volatile and soul-crushing part of my life. I found myself coming back to a Waylon Jennings song, Storms Never Last, and crying to it in my car. Storms Never Last used to provide comfort about a month before, but during this part of my life I felt the title was a lie, it didn’t feel as if it was going to get better. I felt mad at Waylon Jennings for even suggesting such a thing could be possible, that storms could pass, or that this one would. 

Writing Waylon started my grieving process and also fucking infuriated my ex. I try to imagine why but have a hard time understanding, like most songwriting that threatens or angers a listener I believe it was because I was truthful in what I wrote. We had tried everything, even had committed to doing couples therapy, to mend our relationship but his anger made it impossible for me to feel safe with him. His contempt for me, the resentment of my personhood, the image of how his face warped and contorted into a look of disgust at me, the yelling, the holes punched in the wall. The ring he gave me as a symbol of his love for me had warped and our relationship along with it. We couldn’t come back from it, it was un-mendable. We both lived in a perpetual state of fight or flight for the remaining month of our relationship. I had nothing left to say to him, we had hashed out everything there was to hash out and it was over.

It ended in me getting my stuff after it sat in his apartment for a month and him screaming that I was a coward at me over the phone on speaker while my mother sat with me and listened wordlessly. He called me a coward for “quitting”, “giving up”, but it is the most important lesson anyone can learn in relationships. Quitting is a great and useful skill that can keep you safe. 

I tried to extend some kind of compassion to myself even though I felt I deserved none of it and ended the song with this final chorus: 

Everything that hurts

One day won’t hurt the same 

Everything that hurts 

Will seem funny and you will have changed. 

I’ll have changed, I’ll have changed, I’ll have changed.