Machinery of the Human Heart
patreon
Akathisia: the writing process!
🕑 Added 2025-12-27 02:39:15 +0000 UTCHi! Tonight I'm telling the story of how Akathisia came to life (and was named)! As a note, Apple and Amazon preorders will begin on Jan. 1st, so I'll update either my linktree or the current presave page and blast it out to everyone once they begin. I am going to try to see if there's a way to add the preorder links onto the current presave page once the preorders launch.
The night Akathisia was written, I had come home from a production session for Surgery and was exhausted and a little depressed. My mattress was on the floor at the time because I was in the middle of changing bedframes. This lent to the gloom.
Earlier that year, I had been prescribed a medication. It gave me a (mostly temporary) condition called akathisia - one of intensely uncomfortable motor restlessness. After the additional medication to counteract the akathisia failed, I was instructed to stop taking both of them.
This unique sensation of extreme physical restlessness stuck with me, and it struck me that I could use it as a metaphor for something else - emotional restlessness.
I sat down on my bed and listened to "i love you" by Billie Eilish for a bit. She captured the feeling of loving someone but in a melancholy way, and I endeavored to do this in my own style. I opened my journal, which was a 90s-reminiscent green, pink, and yellow speckled one I had bought in Jersey City while exploring with a friend. The words poured out of me.
"I'm unhappy in everyone's arms
And I'm restless in every heart - "
which I later changed to,
"And too restless to keep in your heart
Just try holding me down
And I'll writhe while I drown -
Come to life, disassemble you, hide all the parts"
I replayed videos in my mind of what past loves had done to me from their point of view and described the passing on of trauma in my words. I imagined the ways in which what they'd passed on to me caused me to feel afraid to love someone else, and the song took on the attitudes of multiple conflicting musical styles to add to its intensity.
Akathisia is a song which, not unlike Champagne, hit me all at once, at least once I wrote the first line. The chords, lyrics, and music played in my head all at once as I wrote in my journal. (Nowadays I keep separate journals for inner thoughts and music/lyrics.)
The ending of the song went unfinished for some time, until I had the urge to perform it live in full. I poured my soul into the last few stanzas and wrote them in minutes, much like I had done with the last stanza of Remember Something Beautiful. When I showed the song to Wyatt, he praised those few lines especially well, and this warmed my heart. It became his favorite song on the record, and one of mine as well. I feel proud to have written it.
Thank you so much for reading! Stay tuned for more posts next week of course!
As a reminder, I try to post on both Tuesday and Thursday each week. If I am unable to post on that day, I make a post rescheduling and sometimes explaining if I am able.
