The only thing for certain in the exercise of healing is the fact that it is not linear. In no reality is the process and progress of becoming whole again a straight line. Grief, shame and guilt ride the waves of the sorrow that carries them, pouring out of the individual into the world they inhabit, oftentimes at the most inopportune moments. A lot of course correction is attempted in the wake of the mistakes which have been accepted, and most of them carried out in haphazard ways – a desperate measure to right the wrongs.
Ditty, a singer-songwriter and ecologist tries to reconcile these conflicting feelings on her folksy and ethereal EP entitled “Skin”, the narrative of which is entrenched and based out of a similarly rampantly progressing Goa. Over the course of a brisk 24 minutes, the artist delves and relives many instances that evoke the feelings that would ideally stay hidden – the sunken iceberg of emotions – through five tracks brimming with pathos, love and, most importantly, concern. Concern for herself and where she goes from here, swimming in the waves of the aftermath of what inevitably happens when the iceberg melts. But also concern for the world she inhabits, which she grimly accepts of having failed time and time again, the rest of us her witting accomplices.
She dives into this exploration with “Home in my skin”, which opens with samples of the natural surroundings she found herself in during the creation of this project (a theme that is constant throughout the tracks). She opens with a poem that tells us that she is here to reckon with it all, to “talk to stillness” as she accepts that she has been “running away for too long”. There is a bold admittance to how much she has put her body, her skin through all her life, and asked for more than she herself was willing to repay. It all forms a very fitting parallel with her (and our) treatment of the environment around us, and this is a tightrope walk she manages to sustain
throughout the project. A double entendre that weaves her body and the body of the collective Mother – the earth we live in. She goes on to apologise for the
cannibalisation of it all, painting herself out to be acting as a slave to her own desires.
She dives into this exploration with “Home in my skin”, which opens with samples of the natural surroundings she found herself in during the creation of this project (a theme that is constant throughout the tracks). She opens with a poem that tells us that she is here to reckon with it all, to “talk to stillness” as she accepts that she has been “running away for too long”. There is a bold admittance to how much she has put her body, her skin through all her life, and asked for more than she herself was willing to repay. It all forms a very fitting parallel with her (and our) treatment of the environment around us, and this is a tightrope walk she manages to sustain
throughout the project. A double entendre that weaves her body and the body of the collective Mother – the earth we live in. She goes on to apologise for the
cannibalisation of it all, painting herself out to be acting as a slave to her own desires.
The second track, “Wonder”, forgoes the apologies for words of affirmation. A
seemingly simple love song in the vein of many a folk rock artist before her, that
grows deeper as you realise the recipient is her own self. An interesting juxtaposition from the previous track where she shames herself for giving into her own desires, and yet speaking from a place of love to herself on the second track is an act of bold defiance to the desires to hurt and pillage that same body. It blooms from the same philosophy of how all our words of vitriol and hate for another pale in comparison for the words we reserve for ourselves. In the promise to love herself “dark and light”, she conjures a fantastical future for herself where there is unconditional care within the home. The third track, “Hold Me”, is an illustrative, emotionally baroque folk portrait of wronging someone whose care she enjoyed. Her guilt here is woven with her words of caution to the other, whom she warns to not hold her too long. The track concludes with a confession of infidelity, preceded by an admission of a white lie, “I don’t stop, don’t tell him, that I’m not my best.”
With the penultimate track, “Mamma”, the project turns to take a more direct approach into addressing the subject matter of environmental damage. Repeating her promises to offer unconditional love to the bodies she lives within, the track contains references to the rivers, the seas, the mountains of the Mother she wishes to protect and swears to stand by from here on out, with a direct plea to “make forests, not war” to end. She closes with “Money”, a track earlier released as a single, inspired by her first-hand witnessing humanity giving into the deep, selfish urges of capitalism, resulting in deforestation in Goa. A defiant, peppy protest song, where she emerges after her explorations of what matters most to her in this world, by way of her dealing with all the aforementioned greed, guilt and shame. A world where people cared less about money and more on the things it “won’t buy”, it is an effective closer for a project desperate for a reckoning. After admittance and confession, there can only be acceptance and change.
“Skin” is an ambitious outing for an artist who wants very badly to be part of a
change in the system that has moulded her. What could’ve been a self-righteous,
finger-wagging sermon becomes humanised with her inside-out approach to the
subject. To attempt to be the change that she wants to see in others, which includes being kinder to herself and the body that facilitates her existence and her art. She may call herself a fool for wanting an environmental and societal utopia, but she’s self- aware to see the very human mistakes that stand in the way of that, including her own.
