Ballad: what's in a word?

According to the wisdom of the internet, a ballad is ‘a slow sentimental or romantic song’ or ‘a poem or song narrating a story in short stanzas’. 

My EP, Ballads for this Age, seeks to reclaim the latter - the folk tradition of ballads as storytelling - to narrate my own very personal issues of my early twenties, but also the broader societal issues I’ve become aware of in this time. Taking on tradition and writing it anew in the age of individualism, the self is central in these stories and it is me, it is me, it is me, my flesh and heart laid bare. Fragmented stories for these fragmented times, fragments which I hope will be passed down to future generations, if not as a warning, then maybe as proof of the self-awareness of suffering, or else hope.

So what are the stories I’m telling?

Retreating back into the earth, perhaps the only way in which we will ever truly connect with nature; fingertips burning and skin scratched to the bone; session after session after session after tablet after tablet after tablet; a man coming up the stairs; years of safety mechanisms ingrained into the mind, seared, branded, but absent from even their awareness; boats and lies; the year that she left/the year that she arrived; denial; catching everything and all to maintain your delusion; billionaires and space junk and birds slick with oil; eyes becoming opened or maybe you open them yourself; flowers and some other forgotten beauty revealed, in spite of it all.