All Your Troubles

Emo, imposter syndrome, and commodifying vulnerability

I am genuinely, from my whole chest, excited to say I’ve released my first 2 songs under my own name Mallory Hawk. I could not say that 5 years ago when these songs were written. I couldn’t even say it 2 years ago when they were finished and sitting on my hard drive collecting digital dust. I didn’t write my first “real” song until 2018 when I moved to NYC and felt the independent artist rush around me. I was pretty blown away by how everyone just did it. They all knew how to make a demo and start a band, there was no question of confidence, only logistics. All I knew was how to play guitar and hold a beat down on a drum kit. But even though I’d been playing guitar since I was a pre-teen, I had never written anything original. This is still shocking to me all these years later.

I was a very creative kid and teenager. I was a writer, actress, dancer, model, violinist, photographer, drummer. I was extra-curricular, bitch. I lived for it. My first theatre role was in 4th grade, Augustus Gloop from Willy Wonka. I shoved my hair into a trucker hat to look boyish and most of my lines were moans of “MMM… CHOCOLATE!” until I met my sweet fate drowning in a chocolate river made of crumpled brown paper. From then on I always took the lead, I played “Cinder-riley,” an Irish Cinderella in a melon-pink dress. Or Alice from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice Through The Looking Glass,” I stood a foot taller than the girl cast as my “mirror twin” counterpart. I was growing fast and learning that an awareness of your own body is really uncomfortable. The discomfort was thrilling. Performing made me black out. I liked it.

I learned dance routines and performed all my favorite Britney Spears and S Club 7 songs at my local McDonalds (suburban as hell). I always got second place, my older brother clenched the #1 trophy every f*ckin time with his rendition of “It’s Gonna Be Me” by NSYNC. Point being, if there was creativity involved, I was there. I tried to be “cool” and play sports but I gave up on all of them, spending all my time at volleyball practice daydreaming about AIM and Limewire.

In college I studied creative writing and poetry, I even won $200 for a poem I wrote about Lou Reed. Sometimes I’d jam on the university quad with the Carolina folk bros. They all looked fresh from a hike every day, their skin a balanced fusion of dirt dust and consistent sunlight. Every so often a guy named Jordan would bring his hammer dulcimer and we’d play Fleet Foxes until he scurried back into the woods barefoot. I still felt like Goldilocks in the wrong house. I wanted to wear shoes. I wanted to rock!

I was going to indie/hardcore shows often and alone. I started to have somewhat identifiable feelings of envy as I watched the musicians I admired perform. By the end of the first song I was usually so inspired that I wanted to leave immediately to go play guitar. Of course I stayed and continued to get my sweet little mind blown by Minus the Bear or whatever shit I was into at the time. I began quietly uploading covers to youtube, but every single video began with a spoken disclaimer, stating I’d never do the song justice or be as good as the emo dudes I was covering. You can even see it in the Thrice video description below.

they’re all private now, don’t even try it. that’s premium subscriber content.

You’d think with these clues, and all my artistic ventures in life, I would have started making music. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. There was no way. The divide was clear. Performing was for men. They were royalty, I was their consumer. I was ready to bow down Wayne’s World style and shout “we’re not worthy!” I could never play to 150 people! No way. I’d never be that good.

After years of talk-therapy and guitar-playing, I’ve “unpacked” all the layers to my inability to see myself as an artist. On top of the normal imposter syndrome layer, there was this thick, hardened, darker layer. Like moldy, solidified icing on top of an imposter syndrome cake. And that icing was emo music.

What happens next is a look inside a fearful artist’s brain, an inability to take your own advice. Your “inner saboteur” as RuPaul calls it. This is my story, and I share it not because I think I’m special, but because I’ve spent a lot of time with artists and have confirmed that these complicated feelings of self-doubt are common. And it’s not cured in an instant with an “a-ha” moment. It took years of work to re-shape my reality.

I’ve been studying music (in a non-academic sense) my entire life. In the music video I just released for “All Your Troubles,” there’s footage of me at age 3 dancing and performing for the camera, intermittently hypnotized by MTV as it plays The Cranberries “Free To Decide.” The home footage begins with me singing an acapella version of “Ironic” by Alanis Morissette. My parents shared their alternative tastes with me and I latched on quick. But the first kind of music that really felt like it was made for me, was emo.

As a white woman, there was a good amount of representation for me in music. But the underground music I was compelled by? There were no women there. There were definitely no people of color or gender non-conforming people there. The dudes screaming about being “outcasts” were the least-marginalized people in America. It never occurred to me that I could start an emo or screamo band. And even if I had started an emo band, I would have been too scared to play a show or throw myself to the misogynistic wolves of emo culture. I didn’t understand nuance, but I did know that women didn’t belong on stage, they belonged in the songs as antagonists or lyrical fodder. I knew this for certain, because all media I consumed in the impressionable years of my life told me so.

In high school I saw Michelle Nolan of Straylight Run play live for the first time. All the men around me were calling her their “wife.” I would naively chuckle at them, but all I could think about was her bravery! She was amazing, she looked like me, she was having fun but she didn’t have to be the star. What a dream! I scoured the internet for more information about her. I wanted to know what she was listening to, how she got this great job. Unfortunately all I found were forum posts about how she was the dramatic love interest between various influential men in emo. They’d post flip phone photos of her and speculate which scathing lyrics were about her. Or simply degrade her talent, noting that she’s only in the band because she’s related to John Nolan of Taking Back Sunday. And… way more dudes calling her their wife.

On Straylight Run’s debut record, Michelle fronts one song. It’s called “Tool Sheds and Hot Tubs” and I was specifically enamored with an acoustic version I can no longer find. I spent multiple late nights learning it. It had all these challenging chord changes and pull off techniques that were new to me. And I could fucking sing it! I was so pleased with myself and I mustered up the courage to play it for my high school boyfriend. We both dabbled with guitar, but he was a more confident player than me. He took the guitar afterward and tried to learn the song. He wasn’t picking it up instantly and got very upset. He stormed out of my house a few minutes after I played it, my thrilling pride only lasted a minute or two. I wondered — do men love Michelle Nolan or do they hate her?

Like many of you who are probably reading this, I am a child of the internet. Technically all children are now, but I grew up with the internet, not on it. The most pivotal moments of my life happened in a peeling leather office chair. I’d go to the library just to be on the internet for 1 single hour. My parents bought into every stage of it. We had dial up, AOL, broadband, you could find Windows software upgrade CDs in our shelves somewhere between Weezer’s The Blue Album and Green Day’s Dookie. It was enthralling at the time, but it had limits.

Around the year 2000 I was old enough to graduate from “Kids Only” chatrooms and Barbie mystery games. By then my brother and I had an allotted hour of computer time that we had to alternate between. We were both voraciously consuming music from defunct music sites like MP3.com and MySpace. It felt like a scavenger hunt, it was rewarding and personal.

My world cracked open on Purevolume.com when the song “We Better Learn How to Hotwire a Uterus” by The Fall of Troy came rattling through my Logitech computer speakers. Me (and my uterus) were stunned. The guitars clanged and jerked me around, it felt more like a sensation than a song. It was rebellious, yet precise, and I needed more. Thomas Erak, the leader of the band, played impossible guitar riffs and sang at the same time. This guy’s processing power was on a level I needed to understand. Thus, my descent into grindcore, a marriage of misogyny and gore.

As an adult woman, I sometimes picture a fantastical scenario where someone burst through my computer screen, like Kathleen Hanna as a punk rock genie, and her sudden 3-Dimensional figure shakes me and says “Mallory, it’s the guitar you like. It’s the music you like. It’s the vibrations you feel. It has nothing to do with the wondrous and impenetrable façade that society has built around men. Make music, you’re equals.” But there was no genie. Just all of my favorite bands talking about how women are frisky diabolical demons who cause them pain. And I was singing it right back to them.

I was so proud when The Fall Of Troy made it onto the Guitar Hero 3 game with their song FCPREMIX. Suddenly I could speak with my high school classmates about one of my favorite bands, a wall had been broken. I’d eagerly tell them that FCPREMIX was derived from the band’s original song “FCPSITSGEPGEPGEP” which translates to: “fuck condoms, premarital sex is the shit, get ‘er pregnant, get ‘er pregnant, get ‘er pregnant.” I ripped out photos of the band from my Alternative Press magazine and slipped them into the front of my school binder.

I went to one of The Fall of Troy’s reunion shows in 2015. I was alone, new to Boston and still struggling to find my social footing. I’ll never forget it, not because the performance was mind-blowing, not because I had a good time, but because I stood in a sea of sweaty dudes in band t-shirts feeling an amalgamation of isolation, shame, and most importantly, relief. Relief that I felt separated from this. Relief that when Thomas Erak rattled off cocky nonsense to the crowd and played a ridiculous cover of The Weeknd’s “I Can’t Feel My Face” I stared back at him and confidently thought — this dude’s a fucking loser.

Around this time, I began to better understand independent music and gender, and I was feeling profoundly inspired by lo-fi songwriters. Songs were forming in my head at night, badgering me while I was trying to fall asleep. Bridges. Dynamics. Reverb. Harmonies. Holy shit. This was a breakthrough, I was beginning to see songwriting as something I was actually capable of doing. Great! Next step would be to write some songs, right? Except, one big problem. My self-doubt was monumentally bigger than my logical brain. My self-doubt was an iceberg. I couldn’t even access the logical part of my brain yet. Over the next seven years, I would chip away at that iceberg through a series of challenges I set up for myself.

Confidence, I needed confidence. I took guitar lessons. My teacher, an Eric Clapton Berklee stereotype, begrudgingly taught me songs with alternate tunings. Music theory made no damn sense to me but I practiced regularly and he really respected me. We’d jam over progressions and I’d completely lose myself. I eventually stopped going to lessons because we’d just gab for 20 minutes then jam for the rest. From there I bought a loop pedal and would rush home after my desk job to jam with myself at night. A sizable chip in my iceberg. I had also purchased a new microphone that stayed in its package for a long time, I was scared of it. Until one evening, when I discovered that a lifelong family friend, Brandon, passed away from an incident involving fentanyl.

Brandon, on the left in both photos, in our living room where my parents graciously let my brother’s emo band “Nothing Is Forever” practice

Something was bubbling up inside me, tears, heat, confusion. It was urgent. I opened the microphone. I booted up GarageBand and shoved myself in my bedroom closet and emoted weird, high-pitched sadness over some minor chords. I was so embarrassed listening back to it that I deleted the track instantly and tried to forget it happened. The self doubt iceberg chipped again. Little did I know, a new challenger appeared, as I would go on to realize that 90% of my songwriting comes from a place of intense, demanding pain. And even though I wanted to write more songs, I could have never anticipated what it would be like to consistently psychoanalyze and commodify my most palpable moments of sorrow and catharsis.

I moved to New York. Still too afraid to play music with men and sing in front of others, I put out a call on Craigslist to start an all female band. After 7 months of unsuccessfully playing music with strangers, a pretty solid crew remained. And they wanted me to lead. I started writing more chord progressions and bringing them to practice. My fingers and voice would tremble before presenting my ideas, then I’d beam on the train home listening to my phone recordings of band practice. Chip.

By this point, I could start to see my logical brain through the ice. I knew I wanted to write songs and play shows. But even though I could see my logic in the distance, I still couldn’t tap into it. I didn’t just want to make music, I wanted it to be good, and I needed to figure out how to express myself but forego attention. As my passion grew, my peers around me noticed. Their encouragement and validation was like a flamethrower to my self-doubt iceberg, it was actually beginning to melt. Without them I never would have played a show or gone on tour.

I have immense gratitude for everyone who treated me like their peer when my self-assurance was so warped. I think every young person should know what it’s like to feel a sense of community and I really did. Jim “Gem” Hill, asked me to be the bassist of their band Slight Of, leading me to buy my Danelectro Longhorn and discover a love for bass that fiercely rivals my lifelong love of guitar. I played my first show and had my first tour in this band. My memories of gigging and giggling with them for nearly 4 years are vivid and rich. I was blacking out again, tapping into that uncomfortable, yet confident feeling I had as a 4th grader on stage in my school play. I had to keep going.

I was working closely with an impassioned Mike Caridi, who saw enthusiasm in me and gifted me his old audio interface so I could start making some of the worst demos you’ve ever heard. The interface mysteriously has the word “SPELLS” written on it in sharpie and I tried to upgrade to a nicer one and eventually sold it because I didn’t like it as much as my ole faithful SPELLS. My pal Joe Sutkowski gave me a pirated version of Logic Pro X so I could graduate from GarageBand and really open my heart to shred. People were starting to compliment my performances. I was perplexed, they must be lying. Humoring me to be nice. Couldn’t they see I was shitting myself? Couldn’t they sense the fear? There was still a deep mental disconnect. I believed in all my artist friends, and yet I still couldn’t fathom them believing in me.

When I became proficient enough in Logic Pro X, there was a bottleneck effect, a decade of songwriting expelled from me at once. I would spend 12 hours straight in solitude working on a song. I would giggle, talk to myself, dance around my room. My brain was leaking and the iceberg was too. I didn’t even care if the demo sounded horrible the next day, even that inspired me, because I knew what it took to make the song better! I found my outlet and it was pure, uncut serotonin straight to my dome. Still is.

It was time to face the final boss. I needed to make real recordings in a studio and release them. The only way to defeat the boss was to do all of it myself. That way no one, not even my own inner saboteur, could challenge my talents. I began to sift through my demos and voice memos. Some of them were sung through my choked up voice, fresh from a cry. Some of them contained droning expressions of angry distorted guitar. Sometimes I’d just play chords on my acoustic and cry. Every day I was distraught and powerless, stuck in some dungeon where all I could do was prepare myself for potential tragedy with the addict in my life. I became a den mother to my vulnerable, imperfect demos. I didn’t want anyone to see this side of me. By the time my scheduled studio time had appeared, I had reached a fairly healthy place with the addiction that surrounded me. I didn’t want to re-enter that dungeon, but I knew I had to to give the songs what they deserved. I played every instrument until my wrists were hot. I was not tapping into the serotonin I felt when demo-ing in my room. This was pressurized and painful. I was not proud of myself. I should have asked for help.

I finished them, somewhat traumatized by these challenges I forced on myself. I kept telling myself to just release the music, it’s not “that deep.” But it was that deep. I had cinderblocks of delusion tied to my feet and I wanted to keep my art to myself. What I’ve learned from this saga, and what I hope to share with you, is that not all art is meant to be commodified. Sometimes your artistic expressions of pain or love can be written for the relief they provide. If you decide over time that you want to release them, do it. It can take you four days or four years to make that decision. Both outcomes are normal. But don’t wait too long on an account of fear. I don’t care if no one or everyone likes my music, I’m just proud that I conquered a dismal and arbitrary barrier that still stands in front of many people.

As I continue working on my songwriting, and surprising myself with my talent, I know that every one and every live show I’ve seen is part of this process. The beauty is in losing control, when your inspirations are so abundant they just spill. Find your validation, find your logic, melt your iceberg into water, and spill.

Thanks for reading, and listening. I plan to write and release many more songs, because even though my 13 year old self would never believe it, I am a songwriter. You probably are, too.

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P.S. I’ll be playing in the Trace Mountains band this May. We’re hitting some east coast and New England cities. Come hang out.