'Rest Easy' is about being so close to your greatest desire, yet being unable to reach it. The last few years of my life I've had to deal with a lot of disappointments which I often didn't cope with in the healthiest way. There were times I just felt sorry for myself or I ran away to avoid facing my problems. I wanted the music video to capture this feeling. The music video shows me waiting for someone with a rose, getting stood up, and wandering around Bucharest aimlessly only to drink myself into a stupor. I wake up the following day and enter my apartment to find a postcard addressed to me with an apology from the person who stood me up, pack a bag and then leave somewhere unknown. The actual postcard I used in the video was a gift I received when I was travelling through Vietnam in 2018. It has a personal significance to me because this was the happiest time of my life and I really wish I could recapture the way I felt at that time. I thought it was important for the video that the postcard simply said "sorry" because it's an impactful word that is pretty underused when you think about it- the word 'sorry' really does go a long way. It represents the closure I wish I had and am hoping to have in regards to certain disappointing situations in my life. I knew Bucharest would be the perfect place to shoot a video because it's a chaotic city with a roughness to it. It's dirty around the edges, and has a dark past but is still quite beautiful in it's own unique way. I felt a very strong connection to the city and my Romanian heritage when I was there.

What inspired my song “This Island” was a feeling of wanting to find peace from all the chaos in the world. I imagined being on a beautiful island far away from all this chaos. I was motivated to write about a lot of world issues as a form of therapy, because at the time I was being deeply affected by all the depressing stories I’d see and hear on the news and on social media. I wrote the lyrics in 2021 when the war on Gaza was getting worse - I guess you can say this was the catalyst. I want to remind the listener that we are all human and want the same thing at the end of the day – so I guess ultimately the listener should feel a sense of peace after listening to and reflecting on the song and its lyrics.

My good friend Leonard Corcuera wrote several poems and sent them to me for feedback. One of the poems called Marsupial really stood out to me and moved me. I made some minor adjustments to the poem and wrote a melody for the words then composed the chords. The song is about how a close relationship that is bound like a mother/child relationship can evolve into something harmful, and the emotions of longing for something you once had that come along with it. I tried to elicit the feeling of Melancholiness in the song and video production elements- everything from the Boadicea inspired synth to the dark colour grading of the video. This was the most difficult music video I’ve shot so far because it didn’t have a storyline and my goal was to create shots that capture the emotion of the song but still have a continuity and an obvious purpose. I chose to shoot the video in the Bucegi mountains because it’s an incredibly beautiful place that isn’t well known to the rest of the world and you feel so small among the mountains and plateaus. Because the song lyrically has natural elements in it, it made sense to shoot the video in nature and have some animals in it. The free roaming sheep and cows ended up being the perfect touch. A marsupial is an animal that carries its babies in a pouch for months after they are born. I thought this was an amazing metaphor for the inseparability and intimacy of people’s relationships, especially mother/child. My favourite lyric from the song is “When the time comes that you’ve outgrown me will you hunt for me or will you hunt me?” To me this lyric sums up the main meaning I interpreted from Leonard’s poem. That you can be so closely bound to someone and show them the ways of life, only for them to just leave and betray you. This is the main reason we shot b-roll of me singing the song though in abandoned buildings within Bucegi area- to illustrate the feeling of abandonment. There is also some religious imagery in the video which I think brings a further depth and meaning to the song, but I would love for the listeners and viewers to interpret this in their own way.