After the Juke-Box live workshop I originally wanted to use the song – The Swimming Song – as it was an obvious choice for my mermaid character. But I didn’t connect to the song. So I went through the playlist of songs again and the one which stood out was Samson by Regina Spektor. This wasn’t obvious for my character but the emotional side of the song connected with me and my fears. I knew the basic story, as it was a song I had heard before and I knew it was about cancer.
But I researched it further and found pretty much what I knew but more in depth. It was about the singer, Regina Spektor being in a relationship with a man who had cancer. The wonder-bread being the Chemo and the idea of cutting the hair because chemo makes your hair fall out. The cycle of life what cancer gives. You get you chemo, you cut your hair, and you to bed and repeat. And to me reading into lyrics more, it made me feel that idea of being trapped, the world getting smaller around you because of this trauma. But not just his trauma and how cancer changed his life, but how she felt trapped, the guilt and in the end, she had to leave. And that heavily related to me. I wanted to illustrate the emotions of the song rather than the literal story, and just that single idea and the swirling emotions of being trapped.