Journey to FREE
Oct 20, 2021, 6:19 AM
"Die empty.”
Before I had my first child in 2019, I let all my loved ones know that if I died tomorrow, I was ready to go. I was at peace with the concept of death as a natural - and even beautiful - part of life and I had ticked-off every major thing on my personal bucket list in my 30-something years. I asked one of my best friends to write my eulogy in advance, as if I had died already, and gift me with it. It sounds morbid, but it was an enlightening exercise in what my legacy was if I was to pass. I couldn’t look to my future without fast forwarding to the end and working backwards. How did I want to be remembered? What kind of person was I, really? I was motivated to make FREE because someone once said to me "die empty,” which later I discovered is the title of a popular book about not putting off our most important work for another day. Creating new music was my practical response to the challenge of dying empty. I didn’t know when I wrote the grant for the album in the spring of 2018 that I would actually face mortality - symbolically and physically - on the journey to FREE.
I so desperately needed to feel free in the process of creating the record.
That’s originally why I named it FREE. It was my attempt at a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In 2018 I received an email from the Ontario Arts Council (OAC) congratulating me on being awarded a small grant to record my first album in over a decade. I was almost 8 weeks pregnant. I had already moved two times that year, and would move three more times in the year to come. I was less than a year removed from a life-altering work burn out, a messy break up, and a concussion. Carrying life inside inspired me to “die empty” in new ways: now I wanted to show my children what living a life of passion, purpose and resiliency looked like. I was simultaneously terrified and excited to start.
My first meeting with the producer who had agreed to produce the project felt like I was convincing someone who didn’t want to be there that they should be. He didn’t even want to come to the meeting, getting him to the studio around the corner from his house was like pulling teeth. We had worked together successfully in the past, he knew my track record and had nothing but good things to say about my work ethic to others, but in spite of all this I felt like I was trying to sell him on the project. By the end of the meeting I left with the hope that we were on the same page. It was evident a month later that we weren’t when I asked for some basic information and a cleaned up mp3 to apply for another, larger grant and he responded with curt “can’t” when he responded at all. I thought about the limited time I had before my life was to be eclipsed by a newborn. I didn’t want to enter into the exciting phase of being a new wife and mother with the energy surrounding this project already feeling like a weight around my ankles. It wasn’t fair to my new family. So, at the wise council of my husband, I backed off.
Six months later, after giving birth to my son, I pivoted and asked Mark “Rel McCoy” Morley if he was willing to step in and be my production partner for the entire album, after asking the original producer if he felt comfortable with me doing so. He was more than agreeable to this and even met with Rel one-on-one to give his blessing. The Ontario Arts Council approved as well, and a year after I was awarded the grant, FREE was conceived.
Against a cacophony of doubts in my head and real life situations that threatened to derail the project, I fought to complete the record.
The following two years are a blur, but I can tell you that’s how long it took from the album’s reboot with Rel to release day. I was rarely available - even for a phone call. I was busy trying to figure out how to be a new mom and accomplish anything else in my day, at all. My new family life required that I travel between Canada and the US every couple weeks. Rel and I met in his basement studio in Brampton a handful of times, and the rest of the album was pieced together over emails, texts and the rare phone call. During those two years I struggled with undiagnosed postpartum depression; I barely recognized the person in the mirror staring back at me. I was disconnected, emotionally erratic, exhausted, under slept, physically in pain everywhere (at one point my doctor thought I had Lupus), and struggled to feel connected to my husband or myself. Thankfully the connection with my son was strong. Through this, my husband served as a tireless conduit for feedback, encouragement, and realignment when it came to the album process.
Also during those two years: COVID. I was already isolated and disconnected from community after the birth of my son, the constant traveling, and moving multiple times that - at first - I was barely impacted by the limitations COVID put on daily life. For four months I was a single parent as my husband and I were separated by border closures. For three of those four months I hardly noticed as I was just so grateful to be in one place long enough to catch my breath, develop rhythms, and make home. I was still living in a sea of boxes from a move that happened 8 months previous… I could finally unpack and exhale. Simultaneously, work on the album slowed to a halt.
In the fall of 2020 my producer Rel gave me a month’s notice that he was moving from Toronto to Spain. Like, forever. I was genuinely happy and excited for him. Also, panicked. We were approximately 70% done the project. I had applied for two extensions to OAC already, the album was supposed to be finished. We still needed to bang out a few more songs, line up some features, do all the sequencing and arranging, then mixing and mastering. I knew Rel's head would be elsewhere once he arrived in Spain to starting a brand new life, he had told me as much. I was in Rhode Island with no plan to return home to Toronto before he departed. I broke down in tears in front of my husband and begged that we return home early so I could try to get in the studio with Rel for a week before he left for good. We needed to leave immediately to account for the two-week quarantine in Canada before I could actually meet with Rel to finish the record, before he flew overseas. In spite of major business responsibilities in RI, my husband acquiesced. My little family drove back to Toronto almost immediately.
At some point along the way, I started to cling to the completion of the album like my sanity and dignity depended on it.
It’s as if it held the missing puzzle piece to me recognizing myself again. I felt far from free.
Time both compressed and expanded the five days I was in the studio with Rel tying up the project’s loose ends. I would wake and leave the house before the sun - or my son - was up, take public transit an hour and a half each way and commute home well after dark. Around day 3 my ears started ringing and hurting, I could barely listen to the mixes. There was no time to reset the ear fatigue, however. On day five Rel went to the ER because he had chest pain in the night, and was admitted. I couldn’t help feeling a little responsible, the way we had been pushing things every day. He was there for five days, it wasn’t a heart attack but was stress-related, and when he came home it was clear he wasn’t going to be able to mix the record as initially discussed. At this point I was discouraged and worn out from the album process overall. I couldn’t even bring myself to listen to the record for months.
Early 2021 I regrouped with long time collaborator, Michael "DJ Mercilless” Pompey, to mix and master the record. It felt so good to work with an old friend that already knew what I wanted to hear before I even told him. His sound was warm, wide and analog and for the first time since I started work on the record I began to hear the project as a whole. It had sonic and thematic continuity - shocking, considering the circumstances under which it was recorded. I finally began to really like the album. Nah… I loved the album! (a first in my twenty-plus year career). Around the same time Mercilless completed touches on the final master, my husband and I found out we were expecting again. My first thought was simply: I better shoot these visuals for the record ASAP before I physically transform into someone unrecognizable.
Now the project started moving in fast motion. The countdown was on.
The first person I sent the completed master to was Joseph “DJ Jab” Abajian, President of Fat Beats. I didn’t ask for anything beyond “Hey, check this out.” He responded that it sounded great and that Fat Beats would be happy to pick up and distribute the record: an answer to prayer. We set the date of September 24, 2021 for release. This way, I could properly promote the album, release it before the OAC final report deadline and more importantly before my second child was born in October and life changed forever… again. But life was to change before that.
On March 26, 2021, six months before the album was due for release, I had a routine first trimester ultrasound. A tech named Corinne in East Providence, Rhode Island decided to scan my kidneys. This is not standard procedure for a pregnancy ultrasound. She discovered a 5.1cm mass growing on my left kidney. I was referred to an urologist, more tests, than an oncological surgeon. A biopsy revealed it was renal cell carcinoma: kidney cancer. Overall, I felt calm. I knew it was a miracle that the tumor was even discovered, it was early detection, and I figured that if God got me with the discovery, God would also see me through to recovery. It was that simple in my mind. But that’s not to say the diagnosis didn’t stay on my mind... it did. Sitting there in the back, immovable, taking up space.
Managing the album promotional roll out and medical appointments for both kidney cancer and the pregnancy (now deemed high risk due to the cancer diagnosis) began to feel like juggling two jobs… not to mention the daily responsibilities of managing a household, some of my husband’s clerical affairs, and being a mother to an attention-seeking toddler. I also continued to straddle two countries, which meant I became a patient of multiple health care providers in both Toronto and Rhode Island. I quickly had to become an expert at keeping track of and providing my medical records at a moments notice: hundreds of pages from various hospitals, labs, clinics and providers. It was head spinning. The months, weeks and days leading up to release day felt like a glorious and frenzied symphony.
More than ever, the album felt like an urgent mission of a person on borrowed time.
The day we released FREE I dropped to my knees in my kitchen and bawled my eyes out. It was almost an out-of-body experience. So much of my energy was channeled into the record because I had so little control over most other aspects of my life. It was the one tangible thing I could hold in my hand (literally! there’s vinyl) and say “We accomplished this… I did this. I saw this through til the end.” Of course the album work didn’t end there, but it still felt like a personal victory.
As I write this I am due any day to release another passion project: our second child. I wrote this all in past tense, when at present the picture I’ve painted is still ongoing. I'm still pregnant (for another day or two). I’m still promoting the record. I’m still juggling health care providers in two countries. I’m still walking around with cancer growing in my body and not sure of what the outcome will be, although the prognosis looks positive. Mortality is still at the forefront of my mind every day.
I still strive to "die empty.” FREE is a first step.
- Silk-Anne “Eternia” Kaya
"Just a sliver of my mind, A decade in time, And the lessons that I learned, refined. I wish u all the best regardless, I create 'cause it’s me I been rockin this gift since '93 Sincerely, E.” - "Let No Dream Fall,” from the album FREE