ALBUMS // Cayetana – New Kind of Normal

Words by Andrew Bundy

I had a dream the other night in which someone I care about went missing. Her brother found me somehow. He was frantic and  asked me to help find her. I proudly said, “Yes, of course.”

We seemed to be somewhere that was a blend of Coachella and Disneyland – a secluded valley of different aesthetically themed eras. I remember being psyched to see Melody’s Echo Chamber perform their new album on the Tomorrowlandesque stage, before I learned my friend was missing.

 
These sorts of dreams seem to repeat themselves these days. My sister in law went missing in my sleep a different night this week. I’ve become determined to deduce why my subconscious has grown obsessed with these disappearances.

Recurrent motifs embedded in Cayetana’s new album “New Kind of Normal” helped me figure it out.

when the world bears down on me 

will i laugh at its audacity, 

and be able to comprehend? 

I still don’t know how to deal with losing someone. Ever since my father passed away grief has become all too commonplace in my life. My aunt, my dad’s sister, passed just a few months after him. Then I lost a friend to cancer and had my heart smashed for the fourth time.

I started drinking that year.

when the world bears down on me 

will i laugh at its audacity, 

and be able to start again? 

The next Valentines Day I learned why mourning does not solely apply to death. Real permanence is just the worst kind of loss, but it’s not the only kind. Losing a friend causes that same sense of loss to circle back around. Learning someone will never care about you like you want is a loss. It may not be as painful but it’s still there, it still exists.

it doesn’t make much sense

i’m older, but I’m always on the fence 

and i always seem to doubt 

how everyone seems to have it all 

all figured out

I meet so few people in this world whom I genuinely want to spend intimate time with. So little that I don’t comprehend how anyone can be as dismissive to someone as people often are to me. I’m a fairly big dude who doesn’t look like most people do (an Irish/Korean/Hispanic/Native-American mutt). Even my late father joked once that I resembled Penn Jillette more than I did him.

I’ve grown accustomed to meeting people I will develop a fondness for, only to have those people barely acknowledge my existence, or run off, as soon as things get serious. I have this fear now, its been there ever dad passed, that this is just the future I’m to expect, this is just how life will always be. This is normal – it’s just what my existence is. And part of me doesn’t understand how I’m supposed to accept that.

You just want them to act like you matter to them a little. They tell you they have too many other responsibilities to have time for you. Then you see pictures of them smiling with other people somewhere you’d love to be.

having trouble with myself these days 

i’m caged by my despondent ways 

i wake up late, and leave early 

but its the crux of me, to communicate cryptically 

All concession does is remind me how little importance I seem to hold to anyone. Everyone is occupied with their own lives at my age. Too busy with themselves, and whoever they are lucky enough to be sleeping with, to bother caring about someone else’s existence being entirely invalidated by their insensitivity.

I confronted my friend about this in the dream when I finally found her. I expressed my rigorous belief that it was unfair to treat people who you matter to this way.

She told me this is just who she is and I would never be able to change that. She told me normal for me didn’t mean normal for her.

Dream me had nothing to say.

Buy Cayetana’s new album, New Kind Of Normal, here. Tour dates here.