PFLAMES

Q What was the initial picture or concept that led to the creation of Pop’s Blue Caddy?
It came to me in a dream really. Maybe a week or 2 after my dad died, I was really struggling with it. I hadn’t been sleeping much and I wanna say this was the first night I really fell into a good sleep. I had this really intense dream of him comforting me in a way but it wasn’t like present day me it was teenage me. Usually I don’t recall my dreams but it was so vivid that I grabbed my phone as soon as I woke up and started writing the details. I didn’t know what I was gonna do with it but I had to write it down.

Q How do you walk the line between fantasy and reality in your writing without betraying emotional truth?
I feel like the emotions are always there. There’s always a part of me in it no matter how over the top I want the story to be.

Q That experience with your childhood self is so intense—what were you thinking when you were writing that scene?
I really do owe a lot of the imagery to what I saw or felt in my dream, like have you ever had a dream so vivid that it felt like real life? Once I sat down and read back over my notes, I fleshed out some of the details a bit and started thinking how would this look, how would this sound you know. The original draft was a good 10 minutes lol

Q Was it tough being that honest with yourself in those words regarding insecurity and regret?
Yes and no. Writing and recording it…that was easy. Now once it was done the idea of sharing it with the world at large…that freaked me out!

Q The song is about recovering lost purpose—do you think that you’ve regained that purpose now?
I believe I have. There’s something about grief and losing someone close to you that forces you to reevaluate who you are and why you do what you do. I felt like or I feel like I owe it to my parents and the people who believed in me to walk in my purpose and be the version of me they thought I was.

Q When did you come to understand that childhood self was a person that you needed to reconnect with?
Honestly, in a short time frame I lost a lot of people close to me. Both my parents, one of my musical mentors that I had growing up. Man it all hit in like a 3 year time span and in between all that was COVID. It became a thing where I had to face me and deal with aspects of life I had left behind. I knew I couldn’t get my innocence back but I could find the pureness in my spirit, that I could do!

Q Personally, how do you balance between forgetting the past and learning from it?
I’m at the point now that I embrace it all. Every aspect of it. The flaws, the pain, they’re all just as important as the good times. They are what bring the balance of you ask me.

Q Did you write this song during an emotional or turning point of your life?
Very much so!

Q The “second chances” theme translates through in the lyrics—do you think human beings are actually capable of starting again?
Wholeheartedly, it’s not easy because it’s not comfortable, but staying stager or stuck is far worse. It’s definitely a want to thing tho. I feel in order to start over you have to be willing …willing to sacrifice and let go of things and a lot of people just fear change to much, but yes the ability is there for sure.

Q Was the point of finishing the song with your parents a gesture towards coming to peace?
It was definitely me trying to find peace and accept their transitions, like I’m forced to start over and build the rest of my life without you…in my mind it was their parting gift to me and this next phase of life was my gift to them

Q How significant to you was the inclusion of that last hope or revelation?
It was very significant because it was real. We grow up and start families of our own, we get jobs and fall into this rut sometimes. This cycle of going through the motions because that’s what we’re supposed to do. Not because we love it or it provides passion and purpose you know, but who besides ourselves is stopping us from having both? It’s like that lightbulb went off telling me it was me that had been getting in my own way and only I could fix that.

Q Do you believe pain is needed in order for growth, from what you’re writing about here in this song?
Not always but in this case yes. It was that jolt that sparked me to essentially be me again. That inner child was still there waiting for his moment, wanting to be heard and idk if I would’ve listened if I hadn’t been stripped down to my core and forced to look at life through another lens.

Q What feeling do you hope listeners will feel when they listen to this song?
I hope it brings them a sense of joy, hope for themselves even, like if you’re breathing it’s never too late to be who you want to be. I also want them to see the creativity in it. Like you can talk about and deal with grief and it not be a depressing thing.

Q If you could tell the childhood version of yourself in the song one thing, what would it be?
To always be true to you and love who you above anything else