First track that introduces the Little Grown Up Child “the Naif” also known as SHEVA in the context of her generalized personal experiences and resultant lessons projecting the shape of her future mindset on life, relations, people and the world.
How is the persona of the LGUC introduced?
Sound-wise; The Progression paints the picture; she exists in a world she is yet to discover; one she is excited to discover but one she does not know she knows very little about. Its also a world that she has decided about from the little she knows. Her constitution and disposition are nuanced in the suggestively neutral and pleasant like melody – tending constantly from an affected and heavy sound themes/instrumentation to a would-be apathetic and indifference interpretation of them. Her introduction is set in the contradiction; a rational being in an irrational universe. The contradiction is expressed by the sweet story telling flow of the chord progression and contrasted by the candor flat and straight minor scope and surrounding. The genre and style of the sound borrowing from the nostalgic characteristics and effects of 80’s; loud and crashing spring revered snares and rhythm, bright sounding synths arpeggiating in the background, a foreboding and capitulation in the reverberation of the bass notes.
Performance; The content of the story is delivered to convey layers of innocent, unveiled child likeness state mimicked by the higher octave, floating over the realism of the low and matter of fact major vocal in the lower octave; the former connoting the present and morphing state of the LGUC persona- naive and curious, into the latter denoting the hurt, shocked and mistaken persona of the little child, now the Little grown up child. The Back ground vocals represent the thoughts in her head; the time that she can look back on to structuralise her change; they tell the story with the lower range vocals- the process, the pain, the internalization and the final abeyance expressed in a seeming apathy and indifference.
Story; It reveals her hopes of human connection; of friendship, relationship and a sense of belonging with other and distinguishes them with her reality- an ununderstanding, mocking and two faced natured type of people. They are the subject and cause of her crushed dream and hopes- to be a Frodo with a Samwise. She talks about the effect of that disappointemnt- pain, the feelings of being trapped and singled out for this outcome- almost like an intentional and specific persecution for her child like optimism and uninformed hopes. This experience pours into confusion and a failed or distorted sight or understanding of herself. All she knows is something must be done. The cause of the problem being she will look to seemingly decent humans for help but will find the same pretentious archetypical characters that will not help. In an epiphinay forced by all the pain, confusion and loneliness she learns that Samwises are rare and Smeagols are more. Humans are more likely to be flasehearted and perfidious than helpful, intentional and true.
How would I describe it?
A half- heavy rhymic organisation of 80’s inspired themes meet a dark, pensive and obscured emotion encapsulated in the apathetic verse vocals and the despair conveying adlibs in the post chorus. Its content is what comes before the implication [denial ] of the experience; an attempt at emotional pragmatism. It is also the unembelished sentimentalism and need for more than a minute- a long lasting and fulfuling connection; the pain and anguish over the destroyed hope by the false- heartedness of self and humanity.
What’s the story behind it?
A short lived but informative Heart break.
What inspired me to write the song?
I reached a point in my life where I didn’t just feel completely and utterly alone, I was. I had distanced myself from so many people and things over a long period of time for many reasons, it had become the irrevocable norm. I was lost in my mind; in how I felt like the only one going through life in its expression to me- the absurd. I needed human connection; a conversation, a social context ,event, gathering; anything.
In desperation and on many ocassions I interfaced with some that weren’t as “needy”as I was, or serious about deep and fruitful connections. Centrally, it was all due to my failed understanding of humanity; an amateur sense of discernment and a general disposition to see the good and potential of others as opposed to the rest of the existing truths in them. Other humans, much like myself in some ways (we seek others to get most of the time, as opposed to giving as we all don’t want to be alone; we want to be understood etc.) were more likely to seek human connection and friendships for the more selfish reasons revolving round the basic social economic indicators and the obvious but ignored mutual self interest, than honorable ones sometimes.
It’s a lesson I’ve therefore learned much later in life. I created the persona of the Little Grown Up Child/The Naif inspired by Volataire’s “Candide”, a book about a character that learns for themselves too, out of a background and character of naivete.
I felt and I know it’s a basic life lesson a lot can relate to on different levels ofcourse, but I felt that the true principle is that Life will teach you and bring out the philosopher in you, especially through stuff like this. These are versions of my derived philosophies about such a common experience in themes of naivete, Credulity, unsophistication, a delayed introduction to the human condition, alienation and innocence to eventual experience.
Was the whole ordeal painful and just generally “much”? -Yes. Has it taught me things I didn’t know I needed to move forward?-Yes. pain makes beautiful things. That’s my take away. Life is not beautiful because it is painless, but because it continues despite such experiences. It gives you the opportunity to learn and reflect and GROW. That’s why I wanted to share my feelings in form of this song from this experience.
Where did I write it?
In my bedroom at my parent’s home. It started out as a journal entry. I found the words but failed to find the appropriate melody and accompaniment that would balance the feelings of pain and numbness, apathy and indifference, and on a whole other spectrum anger, confusion and hurt against the experiences of “betrayal” which if you haven’t deciphered is code for “being wrong about who you thought a person was.”
What was the process of coming up with the song like?
By November 2018, all I had was a pool of about 20 to 30 songs with about 12 favourites amongst the options. I didn’t have a produced track following the form of the raw demo I imagined the song as. One of the producers for the album then suggested this track in line with the concept of the album. As soon as it played, the words and melody I’d eventually written for this song fell right into place. I had failed to come up with a chorus for the song, so it wasn’t completely finished until that track came along and it came right out of my mouth; the adlibs and the harmonies and everything else. That was it. We recorded it one Sunday evening and since then it has been one of the most straight forward songs to create for the Project.
Here’s a few snippets of the breakdown of the process coming up with all of the tracks on this project that you can check out in full on my Instagram and here:
S H E V A HOLDINGS & CONSULTANCY 
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