“Put Me Back Together” by Ivory Circle ft. Aaron Marsh, Wednesday, April 7, 2021

 

Ivory Circle is a trio fronted by former middle school choir teacher, Connie Hong along with muti-instrumentalist Chris Beeble, and percussionist/drummer Rob Spradling. I found the band when I went on an Apple Music search to find songs on which Copeland's Aaron Marsh was featured. Unsurprisingly, Ivory Circle has also toured with Copeland, and this track sounds like it could have been produced Marsh as it sounds like it would be at home on a Copeland record. Chris Beeble, however, produces all of IC's work. The band has four EPs and today's song comes from the middle release of their triangle series: Equilateral, Isosceles, and Scalene--the first of which is not available on Apple Music. I foresee a rainy weekend when I will delve into the albums, perhaps even purchasing the albums not available on their bandcamp page. I think it's so important right now to celebrate and help indie musicians right now as they can't make money through touring.

YOU CAN SEE MY BRANCHES ON THE GROUND. Some days you just don't feel like trying. You're the broken vase on the ground. You don't want to want to be this pathetic, broken vessel, especially when you think that everyone else has it all figured out. Yet here you are. That's the scene that Connie Hong's soft-to-haunting vocals explore.  Aaron Marsh serves as an outside perspective when you're stuck on yourself. He represents the loved one Hong is singing to. He implores her to resist the natural urge to give up. While it may be a big or even impossible ask to reach out to a friend to "put me back together," who hasn't been in the circumstance when they are at the end of their rope and they need someone else to fix them? 

IT'S WRONG TO FIGHT AGAINST A BEATING HEART. There often comes a mid-semester week when the school year feels overwhelming to me. Four classes in a row, disrespectful, dismissive (tired) students, the shuffle between online and offline classes, teaching-grading-planing-etc, promotional photos--lots of stuff to complain about, but who doesn't have problems. I can usually keep my cool--shrug off a bad class and hope for a better one, but this morning I couldn't calm myself down after an awful first period class. And my coworkers were of no help. I didn't want to hear about their successes. I wanted time to wallow. For me wallowing usually turns to a time of reflection. From reflection I can go on and plan another intervention. However, Wednesday schedule had no time. And there was no place to be alone. What I was able to do was to take a walk in the school to a hallway to wing with few classes and few students/teachers. I could either be on time to the next class and take out my anger on the next class or I could try to calm down. I stared out the window for a good three minutes, focusing on the balding cherry blossom trees, meditating on how temporary emotions are. I thought about how I had been looking on these same trees for seven seasons, seeing children grow up. Ultimately one day is like a blossom in the wind, neither here nor there. That's what put me back together, so I could finish my day.

https://genius.com/Ivory-circle-put-me-back-together-lyrics