December 14, 2021
Lily Watras: Music as medicine
STORY BY Olivia McKeon
Lily Watras ('23) is an independent singer and songwriter, who mixes and produces her own music. She's majoring in vocal performance with an outside field in audio production, and in the future, she hopes to start a band with other IC students. She has an array of hobbies including crocheting, jewelry-making, painting, and dancing and is currently keeping 7 house plants alive in her dorm! Lily recently released her first song, "Skin to Clay," which deals with the physical feeling of heartbreak and processing that experience. She comes from a family of musicians and has fond memories of playing songs with her dad and cousins.
Olivia McKeon spoke with Lily Watras in October to discuss the healing powers of music and why she is inspired to create.
OM: Your original song, "Skin to Clay" came out this past summer. Can you talk a little bit about the process of creating that single?
LW: Yeah, so I started with the lyrics actually, that's the way I like to start, and that's not how a lot of people like to start. I guess it sort of depends on the person, but for me, I like to start from lyrics and then build off of that. I feel like if I know exactly what I want to say then I know what feelings I want to emote through the song.
The last summer I took a year off of school, so this was the only thing I did. And I was working a lot too, so I had time to really think about it. I wrote some different musical instrument parts for people that I knew could play. I wrote a violin part for my dad. I wrote myself a bunch of different things. There's a viola part, a part for my cousin who plays cello, a part for my friend who plays bass. I made them all do stuff for me. I sent them sheet music and then either met with them or had them send me the audio, and I put it all together. I edited it and mixed it, messed up a little bit. It's not perfect, but I did submit it officially. So now it's officially published!
OM: Have you been songwriting for a long time?
LW: No. Well, I've made a lot of little things, little pieces of songs, but I've never published anything. This is my first full song. Actually, I was simultaneously working on different ones at the same time, but this happens to be the one I finally got to finish.
OM: What does "Skin to Clay" mean to you? How did you come up the message and all of the imagery in your lyrics?
LW: The idea came from a heartbreak I had. I was trying to get this idea across of how you can physically feel heartbreak. So, I use the word "dimpled" a lot in lines like "dimpled by kisses." It's like I can still feel them. I have this strong memory of that experience. I know what it feels like. And I wanted to do a lot with feeling and memories and heartbreak. Writing the song definitely helped me get through that heartbreak, so the song really goes through my thought process during that time.
OM: I really love the lyric, "We met again but not as one, to trade with cranes and settle sums." Can you talk about the significance of this line?
LW: Yeah, so from the beginning me and this other person were very close. We talked a lot. We were in a very serious relationship, and this part of the song is really a turning point. We met again, but we're not one anymore. We're two different people, and we were meeting just like, "Oh, I left this at your house. I need to give you this back," and "Oh, can you give me back this thing?" And we're trying to avoid each other, so we're throwing from a distance like trading with cranes, flying it over. "Don't get too close." That kind of thing. So, it's definitely a turning point in the song. It's like oh, it's really over.
OM: In the music video you added choreography to the song, which I felt really deepened the emotional effect of the music. Is dance another form of art that tends to inspire you? Have you been dancing for a while?
LW: I'm not the greatest dancer. I have so many little hobbies I like to do, and dance was not the one I focused on a lot. But I started in middle school, and I really enjoy it. Dance for me has a very different feeling than music. It's its own thing, its own form of expression. And they're both great. It was amazing to work with the person who choreographed this for me because she's really talented. The dance definitely tied in with what I was actually saying, and I could make sort of a story out of it.
OM: What makes you want to create? Are there any artists in particular you see informing your songs?
LW: In general, I'm inspired by significant experiences or stuff I want to share with people, something I feel is important that other people should know. I love making things that people can relate to and react to. Specifically, an inspiration of mine is Bon Iver, Justin Vernon in particular. He kind of runs the band, and he's so great. His words are like poetry. Sometimes it's hard to tell what he's even talking about half the time, but it's so great if you get a little hint of what he's trying to say. He has such unique ideas about music and what you can use to create music. Especially recently, he's been using a lot of computery stuff, which is cool. Yeah, he's definitely my biggest inspiration.
OM: You mentioned that you included your dad and cousin on the song, so I was wondering if you come from a particularly musical family. How did you first get into music?
LW: Yeah, my dad is in the Portland Symphony Orchestra, which is in Maine, and he's also a music teacher. So, everything in my house was music. We would sing folk songs all the time when I was little. Sometimes he would record them, and that was so fun. I have a lot of memories of that. My dad actually has six siblings and almost all of them do music, so it's something at least on my dad's side. I mean, my mom's kind of musical too, so yes, it's in our family, I guess.
OM: Do you have any upcoming projects that you're working on?
Yes. I have a bunch of half-done stuff. I have an idea for a song that I want to write, and I've decided I'm going to write it really fast, and not spend as long as I did on this one. So hopefully, I'll get that one done first, and then these other half-done ones. Because this one took me the entire year to write and finish because there were so many parts, and I got so many people involved. I'm hoping that maybe for this project I can do it all myself, and then get it done really fast.
OM: Are there any themes that you tend to write about? What is your favorite part about songwriting or just music in general?
LW: A lot of heartbreak, that's one of my favorites! As for my favorite part of songwriting, music, for me at least, is a form of medicine. It's always been like that for me. You can listen to something based on your mood and feel that mood. Sometimes you just want to be sad and so you listen to sad songs, and you can be sad or if you're at a party, you can listen to something really pumped up and it will get you pumped up. I just love that aspect of it. It will make you feel things, and it can be sort of like a tool if you're going through something. You can use it to relate, so you don't feel alone in what you're going through. It's really like medicine.