MIND – Vs. – HEART by ELENA C. LOCKLEIS is a beautifully composed work of music that maps the inner conflict of need and fear, of covering the self and of exposure. With imagery at once familiar yet compelling, Elena guides the audience into an inner place, of indecision, of fervid heat, of cold hard fact. The words center upon a profoundly inner conflict that we all know—love to want, yet afraid that we may not.

It begins in a serene, screenlike moment: lying in bed in the early morning. Elena’s narrative mode, in the way that she observes the pattern on the other person’s T-shirt, shows how much she appreciates the small things about relatedness. These scenes leave us in the non-event of, well, lying in bed in the morning, yet they suggest something larger potential in the person—that in the person are the seeds of an inner strength that draw in two opposite directions.

In the songs, we find that Elena has the longing of wishing to be close to the other being yet the dilemma of how to open up. These are the songs of struggle within the psyche. When she sings about waking up early, not wanting to rouse the other being, it isn’t merely being polite—it has now become the earmark of the space within the heart that she’s embracing. Even taking the automobile out for a test run becomes something less about real perturbation and about the quest for what makes sense within the heart.

These are the lyrical core, the spot where the struggle between what the mind demands in the thoughts of Elena and what the heart of hers yearns comes through. Her head wants her to be better off without, to enumerate the catalogue of damage and misfortune. But the heart, the perpetual optimist, yearns to take the leap. These are the sentimental lyrics because they don’t call up all the right remedies. These are lyrics that are a duplicate of real life indecisiveness—where the rationality of the head meets the heart.

That second verse, however, is nice. Elena would like to be able to love the other person in the good of life, the bad of life. It indicates profundity and maturation in the thinking process. And yet, even in that acknowledgment, she acknowledges sitting in a driveway of tears—indicating how much of a struggle it’ll be in attempting to use the right reasons when inner fears are echoing. It indicates a sensitive acknowledgment that has much to do with the narrative of the emotions.

It’s a short chorus, yet oh so compelling. Elena invokes the concept of love, why, through the passage of time, through experience, must it be tough. When she “gets in line,” that’s the be-all of ways of insinuating that all are of the same mindset. The past, all the hurt the past embodies, still has hold in the present. The line lets people experience a sense of being understood, of being heard, of group feeling.

When the chorus is repeated, the effect comes even deeper. Each time less of statement, but again another dialogue that she’s having with herself. One can suspect that Elena tries to persuade herself, or perhaps requires the words repeated several times in order to be able to accept what they are. These final couplets turn us around once again to where the piece began, but now Elena breaks in with a whispered confession—she hurts again. It is a soft yet ripping reminder that the struggle isn’t finished. It is the honesty of the piece that is so gorgeous. Elena does not lie that all is well. She instead throws open the window onto the processes of her mind and invites us to sit with her in that early morning light, feeling all at the same time the love, the fear.